In dialogue with nails: Kuzgun Acar’s Elegy to a Modern Man

Abstract

Little research has been published on the work of Ethiopian-Turkish sculptor and political activist Kuzgun Acar (1928–1976), whose prolific artistic practice constitutes a prescient material inquiry at the intersection of class, blackness and postcolonial identity. His work Elegy to a Modern Man, made entirely from nails, was awarded the first prize at the second Biennale de Paris in 1961. This paper will examine how Elegy to a Modern Man interacts with, and departs from, the use and signification of nails as material and motif in modern and pre-modern art practices. Discussing the genealogical relationships between artworks employing nails either as their primary artistic medium or as the bearers of symbolic meaning, I will trace how Elegy to a Modern Man draws on and dissents from early deployments of nails, including their use in Christian allegory. I will also explore how Acar's work relates to, and differentiates from, the materiality and signification of nails in Man Ray's Le Cadeau (1921) and Congolese Nkisi figures. By examining Kuzgun Acar's work, this paper aims to subvert the common assumption that formal and conceptual innovations in the visual arts originate from a putative ‘center’ and are appropriated or copied by artists working in the so-called peripheries. I challenge these assumptions by arguing that an understanding of Kuzgun Acar's practice, as part of a broader map of artistic practices and influences without denying the singular force of his innovation, allows us to reassess the role played by artists outside of the metropolitan centers of the art world in producing and shaping the contemporary languages and forms of art. This article will do so by employing a transnational comparative approach, finding in a variety of approaches across time, space, and culture, the context within which the continuities and departures at play in Acar's work can be understood.