Ugur Gallenkus

Born in 1990 in Niğde, Turkey. He lives and works in Istanbul. He graduated from Anadolu University’s Department of Business Administration.
His work has been featured in Juxtapoz Magazine, DIY Photography, and My Modern Met and the reach and visibility of his project continues to grow. He exhibited at the Bifoto Fest in Sardinia, Italy and has exhibition scheduled in France, Italy, and Poland, as well as in Turkey.
Because his collages push for change and raise awareness, he often collaborates with aid and advocacy organizations. Gallenkuş recently collaborated with philanthropist Dominik Kulczyk of the Kulczyk Foundation to paint seven murals in Warsaw, Krakow, Lodz, Wroclaw, Gdansk. Additionally, he has collaborated with United Nations on projects about multiple occasions. The United Nations Development Program used five of his collages for a social media campaign, and, during the global COVID-19 crisis, in 2020 he crafted collages for the U.N. Sustainable Development campaign, highlighting the relationship between health, social and economic inequalities, and climate change.

EXHIBITIONS

The exhibition bears witness to the true price children pay for our world’s inequalities. Turkish artist Uğur Gallenkuşş brings global attention to the injustices affecting children through the poignant, heart-wrenching collages.
Gallenkusş considers his art a humanitarian endeavor as well as an aesthetic one. The collages draw from a range of source material, including the work of some of today’s most intrepid photojournalists. The artist touchingly depicts a range of intensely relevant issues affecting today’s children: from hunger to poverty, child trafficking, child labor, child soldier, immigration, healthcare, and education in this exhibition.

The exhibition is based on the artist’s first book: Parallel Universes of Children. The book was published by Uğur’s manager – Arzu Tunca – in November 2020 in honor of World Children’s Day. The book takes the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children, enforced since 1989, as its foundation, aiming to convey the essential rights each child should have, regardless of their circumstances or geography. Each collage represents one of the U.N. – determined rights of children and is accompanied by statistics indicating the pressing realities. This data reminds us that we all share responsibility for making our world better for its children.