azade köker

İstanbul, 1949

Azade Köker, graduated in 1971 from the Ceramics Department of National Academy Fine Arts in Istanbul. After her graduation, she went to Berlin, where she first studied ceramics, then industrial design, and later took up sculpting. She established her own atelier in Berlin during the final years of her studies. She opened her first solo exhibition in 1980 in Hannover which also traveled to Düsseldorf and to Stuttgart. In 1983, one of her sculptures was placed in the State Gardens of Berlin. Later she designed several sculptures for other public places of the German capital such as squares, hospitals and museums. On the other hand, Köker’s sculpture entitled “Passion” which was erected at the Altınpark in Ankara, was torn down and destroyed by the Metropolitan Municipality on the grounds that it was “obscene”.

Her sculptures and installations questioning the concepts of “temporariness” and “permanence” were exhibited by the Gallery Nev in 1991 at the Ankara National Museum of Painting and Sculpture, by the Istanbul Modern -Istanbul Museum of Modern Art- in 2006 at the sculpture exhibition entitled “Memory and Scale”, at the Istanbul Biennial, as well as at solo and group shows held in these two cities. In addition, Köker continued to open exhibitions in Germany on a regular basis, and held sculpture and installation projects in Japan, Korea and the USA. As of 1992, the artist began teaching at some of the leading universities in Germany. Currently, she is a professor of art at the Braunschweig Technical University and is chairing one of the institutes at the same university.