Lara Fresko Madra holds a PhD in Art History from Cornell University. She comes from an interdisciplinary background with an MA in Comparative Literature from Istanbul Bilgi University and a BA in Cultural Studies from Sabancı University. Lara’s research focuses on contemporary artistic practices that challenge official history and offer alternative ways of relating to the past. Her dissertation, “Historiography and Heterochronic Imagination in Contemporary Art from Turkey (1990-present),” investigates the role of spectrality, speculative fiction, discursivity, photography, and the archive in the artistic practices of four female artists working in Turkey. Lara’s current research tackles the potentials of water as a formal metaphor and an elemental vessel to imagine non-linear and anti-hegemonic forms of historiography. She has worked as a researcher, curator, and writer.
