Fondazione ICA Milano presents the exhibition ROAD RUNNER, the first solo show by Cemile Sahin (Wiesbaden, Germany, 1990) in an Italian institution. The exhibition, curated by Chiara Nuzzi and set up in the project room, addresses urgent political themes of our present.

The show is open to the public free of charge from Wednesday, March 26 to Friday, July 11, 2025.

Cemile Sahin explores contemporary visual languages through cinema, photography, sculpture, and literature. ROAD RUNNER is the title of her latest film, presented in January at the Esther Schipper gallery in Berlin and produced by CIRCA. A fast-paced sci-fi thriller, it tells the story of two sisters trapped between physical and virtual realities.

The film seamlessly integrates textual elements within images and spans various genres, including action films, video games, advertisements, and animation.

Sahin’s work blends text and image, creating fragmented narratives inspired by the episodic formats of TV series and online videos. The use of vivid colors and the fast-paced rhythm of her works refer to pop culture and video games, while the content addresses current political themes, such as the use of drones by corporations and authoritarian regimes.

The exhibition opens with two aluminum-mounted prints, installed in the corridor leading to the project room, a dark, immersive space where the film ROAD RUNNER is projected.
Cemile Sahin integrates drones and artificial intelligence into her creative process, transforming them into generative tools. As for the two panels, she used a machine learning software to generate images, training it on her own work. She then generated images through verbal prompts and refined them to achieve the desired result. The panels combine the generated images with short texts: ambiguous phrases open to multiple interpretations that evoke the language of memes, while the images, resembling frames or cinematic storybo- ards, echo the aesthetics of the film.

In the exhibition space, ROAD RUNNER (15:15) mixes different genres and languages, combining drone footage, fictional commercials, animations, and video games. The story takes place in a dystopian future dominated by killer drones, where the protagonist, Bêrîtan, struggles to free her sister from a digital captivity. The work’s aesthetics are inspired by video games like GTA (Grand Theft Auto) and Counter Strike, adopting a layered narrative that draws from cinema, TV, social media, and video games.

As the curator Chiara Nuzzi explains: “Sahin tackles themes related to family and loss while also delving into forms of political oppression and alienation that affect modern man in the digital age. The film analyzes the role of drones in surveillance and war, exploring the connection between video games, military training, and authoritarian regimes, highlighting the relationship between entertainment, industrial and authoritarian power, and individual freedom in an era of hyper-digital connectivity.”

Cemile Sahin’s new film ROAD RUNNER is presented in collaboration with CIRCA and funded by #CIRCAECONOMY, a circular model supporting the free public programme and the annual CIRCA PRIZE, of which Cemile Sahin was a recipient in 2023. Since launching in October 2020, CIRCA has re-distributed over £1,000,000 of #CIRCAECONOMY funds in public art commissions, cash grants, scholarships, and charitable donations, supporting the creative ecosystem and empowering artists globally.

The exhibition is made possible with the support of Esther Schipper Gallery Berlin / Paris / Seoul.

ICA Milano thanks Banca Intesa Sanpaolo, the official sponsor, and Valsoia for supporting the programming and activities at ICA Milano.

Cemile Sahin

Cemile Sahin (Wiesbaden, 1990) is an artist and writer living and working in Berlin. Her practice spans film, photography, sculpture and literature, exploring the relationship between images and texts in a fragmentary narrative language inspired by contemporary media. She studied Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London and at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Her novels TAXI (2019) and ALLE HUNDE STERBEN (2020) are integral parts of her artistic practice. She received prestigious awards, including the Alfred Döblin Medaille, the ars viva Prize 2020 for Visual Arts and the CIRCA Prize (2023). Her works have been exhibited in international institutions and are part of collections such as Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Kunsthaus Zürich and Castello di Rivoli, Turin.