Hande Sever (b. Hande Lara Sever, 1990) is an artist and writer whose works explore the excavation of lost texts and distant images, examining how their omission and dissemination inform historical revisionism and shape archival practices. Grounded in theories of sovereignty and necropolitics, her lens-based practice interrogates the ways in which historical narratives are shaped and manipulated, particularly in the context of military violence, surveillance, and censorship. Often drawing from her family’s history of persecution, she explores the intersection of personal and collective memory, uncovering how visual culture is used to both erase and construct historical narratives.

Sever’s work has been exhibited internationally at the Hauser & Wirth in Somerset (2018), Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna (2021), Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in Seoul (2021), Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin (2025), Wereldmuseum in Amsterdam (2025), and REDCAT: Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater in Los Angeles (2025). Her works have been reviewed in Hyperallergic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Artillery Magazine, among others. She is a recipient of the 2021 Individual Artist Fellowship from California Arts Council and the 2024 Arts Writers Grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Sever’s work has been supported through travel and production grants from the Félix González-Torres Foundation, Eidolon Center for Everyday Photography, Allianz Foundation, Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts, SAHA Association and Hrant Dink Foundation. She has been a Post-MFA artist-in-residence at Hauser & Wirth (2018) and a Pressing Matter artist-in-residence at Rijksakademie (2024), alongside residencies at Human Resources Los Angeles (2021), SOMA Mexico (2023), Kulturakademie Tarabya (2024), and Institute of Contemporary Art Yerevan (2026).

Sever’s theoretical research and writing examine state power, with a focus on authoritarianism and its mediation through visual culture. Her work analyzes how visual culture both reflects and contests broader socio-political narratives. Sever’s essays and interviews on art, architecture, and public space have been published in the Oxford Art Journal, Getty Research Journal, MARCH: A Journal of Art and Strategy, X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, as well as in the edited volume Perspectives on In/stability (Art Institute of Chicago, 2022) and the exhibition catalogue A Discourse through Time: The Photographs of Ursula Schulz-Dornburg (J. Paul Getty Museum, 2027). She holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a PhD in Art History, Theory, and Criticism, with a concentration in Art Practice, from the University of California San Diego. She is part of the editorial collective of FIELD: A Journal of Socially Engaged Criticism.