Hakan Topal is an artist and scholar living and working in New York City. He is an Assistant Professor of New Media and Art+Design in the State University of New York's Purchase College and graduate faculty in the School of Visual Arts’ Fine Arts Department . He was cofounder of xurban_collective (2000–12) and has exhibited extensively, at the 8th and 9th Istanbul Biennials; apexart, New York; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; Kunst-Werke, Berlin; ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe; MoMA PS1; Platform, Istanbul; and the 9th Gwangju Biennial. He represented Turkey at the 49th Venice Biennale. In 2010, he was guest editor of ArteEast Quarterly special issue On Silence and directed a fi lm on eighteenth-century sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, commissioned by Neue Galerie, New York. His book, co-edited with Guven Incirlioglu, is an outgrowth of his work for Istanbul European Capital of Culture 2010. He is currently working on a project about collateral damage and condolence payments in globalized wars, supported by the Prince Claus Fund.
