Born in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1946, Nancy Atakan studied art at that state’s Mary Washington College and then moved to Turkey at age twenty-three. She has lived in the same Istanbul apartment since 1969. While she is now well known in Istanbul as a Conceptual artist with a penchant for collaborative initiatives, in the 1970s and ’80s Atakan was an unknown painter moonlighting as an art instructor at a local high school. During those frustrating years, she faced rejection from gallerists and art-prize juries. Instigated by a 2022 documentary by Dilek Aydın on her practice, Atakan excavated her