Mikail Koçak is a graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Liège and winner of the 2019 Prix Georges Collignon. Inspired by the cultural worlds of his childhood, by his trips to Turkey (his ancestral land), and by urban cultures, his work can be described as multidisciplinary. If his research occasionally takes on the form of personal documentary, it is to create more effective spaces for encounters. In the display window of the art centre Les Brasseurs (2018, Liège), the artist would knead and bake Poğaça (traditional Balkan bread rolls) while his mother stood by his side, instructing him. The bread was then broken and shared with the public. Certain gestures are also repeated like common motifs. Tales of failure and rebellion present in hip-hop (music from his adolescence) and Arabesk (kitschy romantic Arabic music from his childhood) are combined into works that express dreams of social success: miniature Mercedes sculptures and a sofa-raft (Sedir, 2018) offer a fusion of luxury and misery, a partial set of silver dentures combines the bling ostentation of a rapper's grillz with the medical dentures of a Turkish peasant, like ornaments of melancholy.

©Isabelle Meister (portrait)
©Thomas Maisonnasse

Arcade generously provided by the Naef Immobilier