Irem Karaaslan
MA Art History
BLUE for Ocean Plastics
BLUE Residency
2025
Hyperintimacy: Rethinking Coexistence Through Art and Material Enmeshment
BLUE for Ocean Plastics
BLUE Residency
Winter
2025

Background

My project, Hyperintimacy: Rethinking Coexistence Through Art and Material Enmeshment, introduces the concept of hyperintimacy to explore human and non-human relationships in the Anthropocene. Building on Timothy Morton’s hyperobjects and Heather Davis’s material intimacy, it examines how entanglements with invasive materials like plastic reshape notions of proximity, agency, and control. Through an interdisciplinary lens of philosophy, ecology, and contemporary art, the project analyzes artworks by Tegan Moore and Kelly Jazvac, which position viewers within hyperintimate relationships—simultaneously unsettling and transformative. These practices challenge the boundaries between the synthetic and the natural, urging a redefinition of coexistence. How does human agency shift when entangled with non-human forces that elude control? What happens to our understanding of responsibility in a world shaped by hyperobjects? This inquiry offers new insights into environmental ethics and aesthetics, revealing how art reconfigures intimacy and prompts a critical reassessment of our place within a hyperconnected world.

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