SENA BAŞÖZ
POSSIBILITIES OF CHANGE :
Body and Movement
2023
This series of work that Sena Başöz created for her solo show titled "Possibilities of Healing" open to the public between 3rd February-31st May 2023 at Yapı Kredi Culture, Arts and Publishing in Istanbul explores the possibilities of change in solid structures and the situations that we have difficulty in accepting through movement and other processes with the body.
The body is transitory and vulnerable while archives, buildings, monuments, political structures operate on a different time cycle that outlives us. The artist attempts to expand and reach out to what is beyond her reach, find ways of making them lighter, digestible, approachable and penetrable.
She asks the question “What can a body do?” to think about our existence in massive systems, of which we are not a part of and cannot influence the consequences of much such as the climate change. She asks the same question thinking about inherited cultural heritage and our roles in a grand social narrative and what we represent within the narration of history.
Her earliest video works "Friction; A Series of Videos on Alienation"(2006-11) explore the friction she was feeling between her body and the immediate spaces she lived in through fiction. Since then, the artist uses fiction as a tool quite often in her work to create miracle like, provoking performative moments within the mundane, using cheap materials and simple tricks. These new series resort to imagination as a tool in a similar manner.
The Parade
2023
Performance and Installation
Commissioned by Yapı Kredi Culture Arts and Publishing
Director of Photography: Emin Fırat Övür
Performance: Selim Cizdan, Rüçhan Eylül Ercan, Emre Özakat, Gizem Seçkin, Büşra Tuna
Production Assistant: Merve Ertufan
Color Correction: Elif Tekneci
Beyoğlu is one of the most frequently changing districts of Istanbul. The buildings and monuments are repeatedly used for different purposes than what they were originally intended for. Five young performers carry pieces of imagined ruins from today's Beyoğlu as they walk through Beyoğlu. The video documentation of this perfomance is exhibitied as an installation together with the sculptures of ruins. The piece explores the possibility of continuity and regeneration in the face of destruction and social change.
Photo credit: Koray Şentürk for Yapı Kredi Culture, Arts and Publishing
Seabird
2023
2 Channel video installation
Director of Photography: Emin Fırat Övür
Color Correction: Elif Tekneci
The global economic system is based on maritime transport, as it is safe and cost-effective. Goods are transported within colorful rectangular containers that are designed based on the efficiency principle. Seabird is a two-channel video that explores our existence in massive systems, of which we are not a part of and cannot influence. The artist conveys the individual's relationship with the neo-liberal economy by using her own body in a performative way. In the first video, she questions capitalist power relations as she interferes with the system by eating the mini-containers one by one on the ferry passing by the container port. The second video reveals the scale of the operation that takes place in a harbor compared to the artist's body.
When?
2023
Digital print on tracing paper, fans
Variable dimensions
Commissioned by Yapı Kredi Culture Arts and Publishing
A distant friend, an old lover, longing for togetherness, people we cannot see due to various reasons… “When will we meet again?” This question reflects the longing for everything that has fallen apart to come back together. This mood permeates the whole exhibition, and it could indicate a scattered archive, a scattered group of people or a broken heart. This question, as emotional as it is rebellious, can have personal, spiritual, or political connotations. Sena Başöz's new production for this exhibition, When? uses similar materials and aesthetics to those of her installation titled Forough (2018), which consists of bird portraits inspired by the verse of the Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad: “Keep the flight in mind, the bird may die.” (Text taken from exhibition label as written by curators Didem Yazıcı and Burcu Çimen.)
Photo credit: Koray Şentürk for Yapı Kredi Culture, Arts and Publishing
How to Re-Write History
2023
Styrofoam, wood, silicone, antenna, and radio
Commissioned by Yapı Kredi Culture Arts and Publishing
"How to Re-Write History" is a reinterpretation of the artist's previous work "The Eraser" from 2018 that she created as an auto-portrait of herself as much as a portrait of the French author George Perec (1936-1982).
That work has a recorded looping sound looking for the right frequency, signaling to find, to be found, reunited and reached. "How to Re-Write History", on the other hand, emits live news radio from the state’s official broadcasting station TRT.
An eraser wears out as you erase with it. This work considers forgetting as a mechanism for coping with trauma and asks the question “what would be left of us if we were to forget the past?”
Slalom
2nd February & 8th May 2023 in Yapı Kredi Culture, Arts and Publishing
Performance commissioned by Block Universe Performance Art Festival London, Delfina Foundation and SAHA Derneği with support from Yapı Kredi Culture Arts and Publishing
Concept and Direction: Sena Başöz
Choreography: Sena Başöz, Sedef Gökçe, Canan Yücel Pekiçten
Performance and Dance Artists: Sena Başöz, Canan Yücel Pekiçten, Umut Özdaloğlu, Hilal Sibel Pekel
Original Soundtrack: Semih Fırıncıoğlu
A new site-specific version of the artist's performance "Slalom"(2022) responding to Yapı Kredi Culture, Arts and Publishing's archives and collections was performed.
Photo credit: Koray Şentürk for Yapı Kredi Culture, Arts and Publishing
Photo credit: Koray Şentürk for Yapı Kredi Culture, Arts and Publishing
Leap into the Future
2023
Print installation on the wall with images from the Selahattin Giz Collection
Commissioned by Yapı Kredi Culture, Arts and Publishing
Decoupage: Merve Ertufan
How do we relieve the body from the burdens it carries? In order to revive the archive on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Republic and to think about it from a contemporary perspective, two artists were advised to examine and research the Yapı Kredi Historical Archive Selahattin Giz Collection. This collection includes 35,000 photographs, mostly taken by Selahattin Giz (1914-1994), and some others he had collected. The collection is important in terms of documenting the social, economic, and political life of the first quarter of the 20th century. Sena Başöz's print installation on the wall "Leap into the Future" is inspired by French artist Yves Klein's (1928-1962) iconic photographic work "Leap into the Void" (1960). The liberating feeling created by the mise-en-scene and movement in Klein's photograph is reflected in the photographs of athletes Başöz found in the archive. This work, which considers the body as an archive, points to feeling lighter by letting go of the burdens the body carries. Noting the meaning attributed to young people in the first years of the Republic, the artist focused on the photographs of young athletes while researching the Selahattin Giz Collection. Başöz compares their body movements to bird figures. Her work on the collection is shaped by the way she relates to herself, her environment and history, the way she transforms these into a form of communication, and the way she relates to the archive and the past. (Text taken from exhibition label as written by curators Didem Yazıcı and Burcu Çimen.)
Possibilities of Healing Exhibition View
I Told You Everything
2023
Video Installation
Commissioned by Hara
Director of Photography: Emin Fırat Övür
Movement Mentor: Fatma Nur Bilgin
Imrprovisation Guidance: Sena Başöz, Fatma Nur Bilgin
Performance: Almina Bilgin, Tuna Özden
According to the legend about the ears of the Phrygian King Midas, the king's barber could no longer carry the great secret that no one knew and whispered it into a well. After a while, the reeds growing in the well sway in the wind saying "Midas's ears are donkey ears" and announce this secret to everyone.
I Told You Everything is based on the idea that no information disappears. The unspoken, suppressed, hidden will surely reveal itself one day. In the installation, an abstract meadow accompanies the recorded performance of two children. The movements they improvise, inspired by the bodily forms that emerge in somatic experiencing therapies, also remind us that the body is an archive.
I Told You Everything can also be interpreted as a research on how the language of nature finds its counterpart in the human body, inspired by the nature-architecture collaboration in the Hara building.
For So Long
2023
Fans, metal cubes and parachute fabric
Varying sizes
Commissioned by Hara
Sena Başöz frequently uses the cube form in her works as a representation of the rational mind. Examining the cube as a form that needs to be transcended, she approaches it with different strategies and offers alternatives.
This issue in Başöz's practice led to a collaboration with Canan Bozbağ when Bozbağ shared the metal cubes left over from her sculpture practice with Sena Başöz.
With the help of parachute fabric and a fan, the artist explores the possibilities of freedom and expansion while accepting the solidity of the cube.
Photo credit: Kayhan Kaygusuz for Hara
