Mustafa Kunt

Mustafa Kunt (b. 1978, Ankara, Turkey) is an artist based in Frankfurt am Main who works in installation, video and sound. Since 2005 he has worked as a duo with Özlem Günyol. His work with Günyol looks at how people belong, alone and together, and at what language means. It also deals with symbols of power and authority and with news passed on through the media. The duo works with political symbols, language, residue, found objects and measurements taken from geography and architecture.

Hullabaloo (2009) is a multimedia sound installation of 266 loudspeakers playing national anthems from around the world. Halfway through, all of the anthems sound together. In 2019 the pair showed Ses-li Harfler | Ses-siz Harfler at Dirimart Dolapdere, Istanbul. The video Prohibited Letters takes slogans that the Istanbul Governorate banned at May Day 2018. M is a diary book of 365 pages made from headlines of 2018. The Materialistic Paintings are squares of metallic powder whose size follows how much metal a coin contains.

Kunt graduated in sculpture from Hacettepe University, Ankara, in 2001, and also studied at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. At the Städelschule, Frankfurt (2007), he studied under Wolfgang Tillmans. With Günyol he held two-person shows at Basis e.V., Frankfurt (2007), the Dortmunder Kunstverein (2014) and Dirimart, Istanbul (2015). The pair took part in El Dorado at the Kunsthalle Nürnberg (2009) and the 2nd Antakya Biennial (2010). Further group shows were the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011) and Lines of Thought at Parasol Unit, London (2012). The duo won the ars viva Prize for Fine Arts (2012) and the HAP Grieshaber Preis der VG Bild-Kunst (2017). In 2011 they held a residency at Residency Unlimited, New York. In 2022 they held a fellowship at the Tarabya Cultural Academy, Istanbul.