Research Performance Instalation
In Her Shoes
In Her Shoes is a mixed-media installation that questions
the meaning of healing, conserving and destructing through different female-dominant art practices, including handicrafts, performance art, and feminine writing (écriture feminine).
the meaning of healing, conserving and destructing through different female-dominant art practices, including handicrafts, performance art, and feminine writing (écriture feminine).
In Her Shoes
Hosek Contemporary- Berlin
2023
Hosek Contemporary- Berlin
2023
The art
piece is composed of two parts. The first part is a video installation that
reflects seven healing and protection symbols in the form of
knitting patterns
from different civilizations.
These patterns are knitted by six female craftspeople into
wool booties as well as being interpreted by seven female
dancers via a performance within their domestic spaces, recorded through
their perspectives.
The
non-narrative film sequences focus on infinite encounters between individual
expression and collective memory, and are organized in the form of archetypal
shapes with fractal motion within - all serving
to imply the unchanging patterns within a world of flux.
to imply the unchanging patterns within a world of flux.
The second part is a video and text(ile) installation thatses an artist-crafted spoken poem as a sonic backdrop, while embodying it on a projected canvas in asemic writing form. The writing is a reflection of sexual expression, opening a freeplay of meanings and interpretations, while centering around the theme of the Home.
Specifically, the poem explores the search for a safe dwelling place - including different species, mythological figures and non-living beings. In listening to the words, the audience witnesses the construction and deconstruction of this dwelling place. Within the narrative arc, motions through darkness, encircled by a sense of discomfort, are eventually shifted towards acceptance and transformation. The ambivalent spatial composition of the installation, with bespoke sound design and a veil that blurs the interior and the exterior, reinforces an enveloping emotional landscape that is also feminine in nature.
Altogether, this multi-layered work critiques invisible labor as none of the main artistic branches can be seen directly (the booties, the performances, the embroidered poem) while exploring three types of healing: the acceptance of femininity, the therapeutic effect of repetition in movement, and the post-structural expression ingrained in feminine writing. And by knitting this exploration into a range of female-dominant artistic branches, it invites the viewer to reflect on the manifold interplays of identity construction and gender politics, through a needle, a pen and the body itself.
Video design: Ebru Gümrükçüoglu
Sound design: Aytaç Aybak
Performance: Dila Yumurtacı, Melek Nur Dudu, Merve Uzunosman, Merve Atılgan, Merve Pudre, Pınar Akyüz, Ülkü Çaglayan
Wool Craft: Ayfer Demir, Aynur Yazıcı, Emine Kara, Hatice Ferahlı, Havva Türkel, Nevruz Çiftçi
Exhibition Design: Selin Erdemirci
Graphic Design: Aleyna Tezel, Selin Erdemirci
Exhibition Venue: Hosek Contemporary Berlin
Exhibition Date: 14/04/2023- 23/04/2023
Documentation video: https://vimeo.com/697133552/6612128585
Download the exhibition proposition document.
workshop- book
AYA
AYA is a conceptual experiment on interspecific empathy
AYA
Experimental Education Protocol- Salzburg
2022
The experiment is realised as a part of Angelo Plassas' fourth edition of the Experimental Education Protocol, named "Mandrake." It is documented and published as the fourth volume of the Experimental Education Protocol book series.
The aim of this experiment is to challenge conventional instruction and form a series of workshops based on spontaneous communication between teachers and students. The fourth edition of the Experimental Education Protocol took place in Salzburg as part of the Summer Academy and explored the properties of the mandrake plant and beyond, serving as a bridge between aspects of nature and aspects of the self.
In Turkish, the word "aya" refers to both the palm of the hand and the blade of a leaf.
The work draws inspiration from this intersection to think about the complexity of life force in leaves and to experiment with interspecies palm reading.
The creature has a co-destiny, its fortune is neither totally anthropical nor botanical, but somewhere in between.
By reading the "fortunes" of hybrid creatures that are part plant and part human, the experiment declares a new collective body and a shared skin, and fosters ecological integrity between radically different bodies.
The work consists of two parts. The first part of the experiment involves pushing the participants to expand their human-centric intellect and speculate on the "fortunes" of the semi-plant creatures.
The second part involved participants scanning their leaves and reflecting on the absurdity of human-centric systems that categorize every other living and non-living creature as a source of consumption.
By blurring the boundaries of our form of being in the "Dark Ecology," the experiment questions the new ways to construct and deconstruct our common space for the family of things.
Workshop- Instalation- Performance
Mythocondria
A collectively woven research space, a polyphonic living net, which will be exhibited as a participatory multimedia installation.
Since 2019, I have hosted circles with different groups where we simultaneously share knitting practices and oral narratives. Inspired by the etymology of "Mythocondria" (mitos, meaning thread, and khondros, meaning granule), the project involves local participants to trace and record narratives, stories, songs, mother tongues, or lullabies while knitting a tentacular net, a cocoon, a womb.
By viewing oral literature as carriers between the conscious and unconscious and as well as a liaison between individual and collective memory, the project interrogates the construction of meta-narratives.
Mythocondria
Workshop
Arter - İstanbul
2023
Workshop
Arter - İstanbul
2023
Mythocondira is an experimentation on accepting and nourishing the ‘otherness’.
The net aims to expand space for the incubation, transformation or for the stability of the uncanny; for the unknown, through witnessing ‘unacceptable' ideas, dreams, sounds, movements, undesirable parts of human and non-human creatures.
The process started as a women's circle series in Istanbul, with Turkish, Syrian, and Kurdish women under the roof of UNICEF and ASAM, as well as with different women's cooperatives in different cities of Turkey. The work nourishes itself with oral and personal narratives of different languages.
The net aims to expand space for the incubation, transformation or for the stability of the uncanny; for the unknown, through witnessing ‘unacceptable' ideas, dreams, sounds, movements, undesirable parts of human and non-human creatures.
The process started as a women's circle series in Istanbul, with Turkish, Syrian, and Kurdish women under the roof of UNICEF and ASAM, as well as with different women's cooperatives in different cities of Turkey. The work nourishes itself with oral and personal narratives of different languages.
Mythocondria
Workshop
ASAM X UNICEF - İstanbul
2019-2022
Workshop
ASAM X UNICEF - İstanbul
2019-2022
Mitocondrias are tiny structures within cells that carry out the essential task of producing energy for life, and that in nearly all mammals, the mitochondrial genome is inherited exclusively from the mother. Given this, the aim for Mythocondria is to be a nest and catalyst for alternative forms of compassion for the unaccepted parts in the phallocentric world. The work supports a new way of encapsulation and creates the "language of HOME" accompanied by multiple forms of communication.
Can we consider this space a hyperobject? Is it possible to fully witness this space?
Mythocondria Interacting with non-human beings
Aside from participatory knitting, narrating, and jam circles with human beings, I also set the net in non-human nature to observe its interactions with non-human entities.
a spontaneous
act of cocooning
for the infertile
pistachio trees
act of cocooning
for the infertile
pistachio trees
‘By encapsulating another with our tentacular being, feeling and thinking we make attachments and detachments; we ‘ake’ cuts and knots; we make a difference; we weave paths and
consequences but not determinisms; we are both open and knotted in some ways and not others. Storytelling and fact telling; it is the patterning of possible worlds and possible times, material-semiotic worlds, gone, here, and yet to come.’
Donna Haraway- Staying with the Trouble
consequences but not determinisms; we are both open and knotted in some ways and not others. Storytelling and fact telling; it is the patterning of possible worlds and possible times, material-semiotic worlds, gone, here, and yet to come.’
Donna Haraway- Staying with the Trouble
All the knotted narratives, gestures, movements, dreams, all the absorbed moments of silence and laughter, all the languages spoken, and all the fantasies have become one fabric composed of countless fibers and lines. All the verbal and nonverbal narratives serve to sustain two barren pistachio trees.
Instalation- Research
Public Dreams
Public Dreams
“Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.” Joseph Campbell
This work is made for the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial as a part of atlas Design Project.
Inspired by the myths of Assyrian, Babylonian and Greek civilizations settled in the area of Harran, Public Dreams is an installation to reflect on the repeating story arc of ‘the myth’ and its sealing effect on the unconscious . Observing the common patterns in the plots of the three civilizations mythologies; Public Dreams shows 15 different stages of the cyclical myths from death to birth; by using 45 different symbols that differentiate for all three civilizations.
The project underlines the role of myths on gender norms by examining the common tendency behind the masculine and feminine gender assignments to different stages and symbols; along with the idea of "Earth Mother" being complementary to the "Sky Father" in all three mythologies.
With its transparent layer in the front; it articulates the awareness of the transformation of the mythic archetypes manifested in different cultures as metaphors for how we live and relate to one another and those forces that we cannot understand but which shape us nonetheless.
Specifically, with its colors in transition and the spiraling circular patterns, it highlights the need to supersede the strong asymmetrical stratifications between genders towards a world of multiplicity as well as interwoven narratives and identities. Duality manifests as unity in the work.
Instalation- Performance
Sio2
Breath and Bodily Fluids
Self and The Others Within
Ongoing project
SiO2 is multiple methodologies on meeting with the other(s) within.
Positioning breath as the -self- and saliva as the other, it examines the coal(escence) through the glass bloowing process.
This is an ongoing work and it will be exhibited as a multimedia installation and performance.
Positioning breath as the -self- and saliva as the other, it examines the coal(escence) through the glass bloowing process.
This is an ongoing work and it will be exhibited as a multimedia installation and performance.