Umut Yasat (b. 1988, Germany) is a Berlin-based artist whose practice centers on the ongoing project Der Stapel (The Stack), which he began in 2014. Each stack is composed of drawings, paintings, found objects, and personal belongings accumulated over time and compressed to the artist’s height, creating a material portrait of lived experience. Through these assemblages, Yasat explores themes of time, memory, migration, cultural identity, and the transient nature of everyday life. His work treats ordinary objects as carriers of personal and collective histories, transforming them into layered narratives that reflect both individual and societal change. Recent projects have expanded this approach through photography, documenting found arrangements in public space that echo the formal and conceptual logic of his stacks. By drawing attention to overlooked objects and accidental constellations, Yasat reveals the poetic and narrative potential embedded within everyday environments. His works function simultaneously as archives and sculptures, visualizing the passage of time while questioning how identities are shaped through accumulation, loss, and transformation.
The publication “Umut Yasat. Der Stapel 2014–2021” (2021), the first comprehensive monograph on his work, functions both as a catalogue raisonné and an intimate insight into his artistic process, bringing together essays, an artist interview, and documentation of the project’s evolution. Together, Yasat’s works and publications reveal an ongoing investigation into how objects, memories, and identities are accumulated, preserved, and continually reconfigured over time.
Yasat’s project has been featured in numerous institutional solo and group exhibitions at Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig; Kunstverein Trier; Kunstmuseum Heidenheim; Kunsthalle Recklinghausen; Museum Arnhem; Kunstverein Freiburg and Kunstverein Reutlingen among others.
Between 2009 and 2015 he studied in the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe with Gustav Kluge, Jonas Burgert and Marcel van Eeden.
