Contemporary art practices in Turkey between 1990-2020 in the context of relational aesthetics

This study aims to analyze contemporary art practices that took place in Turkey or executed by the artists of Turkish origin, realized in the last three decades, in the context of Relational Aesthetics. It attempts to take the Relational Aesthetics discourse further, highlighting the similarities and differences between realized works, with the purpose of creating a model for categorizing such works and generating an alternative history writing where works are grouped by a trait system developed for this particular project. The theory of Relational Aesthetics developed by Nicolas Bourriaud is introduced and discussed along with the presentation of opposing views by several theoreticians and art critics. Only the works that correspond to the criteria, in some or other degrees, are included in this study leaving all the other practices outside of the scope. Each work is distributed in the study possesses one or more of the traits being: 1) The Regulated Encounter, 2) Conviviality, 3) A Matter of Food, 4) Tete a Tete, 5) The Children, 6) The Act, 7) The Alteration, 8) The Recuperation, 9) The Placeholder, 10) Internal Affairs, 11) The Product, 12) Professional Play and 13) Collective Production. Also, each work is included in the chapter of the most apparent trait it possesses, while all of the relevant traits are given in footnotes and included in the statistical evaluation. The conclusion sums up the outcomes of the implementation of this trait system, displaying the statistical information along with the interpretation of the results and the reevaluation of the theory.