Pinar Yoldas

Through video, sculpture, and installation, Pinar Yoldas calls ecological and biological assumptions into question by prompting for feminist re-imagining and critical engagement with biotechnology of the near future. Genetically Modified Gods is a collection of objects, texts, videos, and other narrative elements that revolve around genetically altered characters, each highlighting a culturally desired trait. A study on human nature in an age where designing new life is possible, Genetically Modified Gods asks: what does it mean to design the next human? What do the qualities or modifications we aspire to have in a designer human say about us? How do our cultural backgrounds affect what we aspire to have in the next human?

Pinar Yoldas is an interdisciplinary designer, writer, and researcher whose work develops within biological sciences and digital technologies and focuses on posthumanism, eco-nihilism, the Anthropocene, and feminist technoscience. Her work has been shown internationally, including at Roda Sten Konsthall, Göteborg, Sweden; Polyteknikum Museum, Moscow; Ernst Schering Project Space, Berlin; NAMOC National Art Museum of Beijing; Transmediale Festival, Berlin; 14th Istanbul Biennial; and Taiwan National Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung City. Yoldas was 2015 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in the Fine Arts. In 2018, she joined the University of California, San Diego Visual Arts Department. She holds a Ph.D. from Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; a B.Arch. from Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey; an MS from Istanbul Technical University; and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her book An Ecosystem of Excess was published by Argo Books in 2014.