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"Then I Decided To Be Free", a solo exhibition by Cihan Çakmak (Lower Saxony - Germany, 1993), a German photographer and multimedia artist of Kurdish origin, who, through photography, video and drawing, explores cultural identity, human relations and memory, interweaving collective and autobiographical narratives born from a personal past of uprooting and isolation. With an international academic background, Çakmak has built a steadily and solidly rising artistic career, with numerous international exhibitions, prestigious awards and works in important public collections.

The history of the Kurdish people, persecuted, nomadic, in a perpetual search for a State and a recognised identity, becomes for Cihan Çakmak a lens through which to investigate universal themes that concern every repressed, marginalised and stereotyped identity. Her research is based on oral history and stories passed down from generation to generation, draws inspiration from personal and family experiences, autobiographical and collective issues that intertwine psychological, sociological and political dimensions, enriching itself with literary references and other narrative and cultural cues. Her works become a tool for deconstructing stigmas and commonplaces, restoring voice and freedom to what too often remains misunderstood, isolated or rejected by the social and cultural context, where stigmatisation prevents an authentic elaboration of trauma, leaving open and unrecognised wounds.

The exhibition at the RizzutoGallery presents a selection of photographic works taken from some of the artist's most representative series [Not Me, Not You/The Opposite Is Connection and When We Leave], alongside recent drawings and the project Where I Left You, consisting of a 14' video and the portrait series My Sister and I. With an intimate and dreamlike approach that combines formal rigour and emotional depth, Çakmak constructs images suspended between memory and vision, between the physical presence of the body and the evocation of what is absent. What emerges is an intense, poetic and layered narration, which traverses emotions linked to loss, anger, care and liberation from inner confinement, capable of transforming the intimate experience into a collective reflection on the search for one's identity, on emotional resistance and the determination to be free.