SENA BAŞÖZ
POSSIBILITIES OF CHANGE :
Body and Movement
2023
Sena Başöz’s solo exhibition Possibilities of Healing is presented at Yapı Kredi Culture, Arts and Publishing in Istanbul from February 3 to May 31, 2023. The works in the exhibition delve into the potential for transformation within solid structures, exploring how movement and other bodily processes can challenge and reshape what we struggle to accept.
In contrast to the transient and vulnerable nature of the body, archives, monuments, and political structures operate on a different timescale—one that often outlasts us. Başöz seeks to stretch beyond these boundaries, striving to make these monumental forces lighter, more approachable, and even permeable.
Her inquiry begins with the question: “What can a body do?”—a meditation on our existence within vast systems which we are often powerless to influence. This same question extends to our inherited cultural heritage and our roles within history’s grand narrative.
Başöz's early video works, such as Friction: A Series of Videos on Alienation (2006-2011), examine the friction she felt between her body and the spaces she inhabited. Fiction, a frequent tool in her practice, allows her to transform everyday moments into performative, almost miraculous events using simple materials and tricks. This series continues in that spirit, employing imagination as a means of transformation.
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, one of Istanbul’s most dynamic and constantly changing districts, serves as the backdrop for The Parade. In this work, five young performers transport pieces of imagined ruins from today’s Beyoğlu through the streets, reflecting the area’s constant reinvention, where buildings and monuments are frequently repurposed for new uses. The video documentation of the performance is displayed alongside suspended sculptures of these imagined ruins. The piece explores themes of continuity and regeneration amidst destruction and social change. In the video, young people are portrayed as the untroubled agents of transformation.
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
In Seabird, a two-channel video work, Başöz reflects on the global economic system, which relies heavily on maritime transport and standardized containers. Using her body in a performative act, she interferes with the capitalist structures that define our world. In one video, she disrupts this system by consuming miniature containers on a ferry, while the second video contrasts the artist’s small scale with the immense operations of a harbor, underscoring the vastness of the systems in which we live.
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 reinterprets Başöz's 2018 work The Eraser, which functioned both as an auto-portrait and as a meditation on the life of French author Georges Perec (1936-1982). The original piece featured a looping recorded sound searching for the right frequency. This updated version features live news broadcast from Turkey’s state-run TRT radio station.
An eraser gradually wears down with use. This work reflects on the erasure of the past as official narratives of history are reconstructed, posing the question: What remains of us when we 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 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 of the Phrygian King Midas, the king’s barber could no longer keep the secret of Midas’s donkey ears and whispered it into a well. Over time, the reeds growing near the well swayed in the wind and echoed the secret: "Midas’s ears are donkey ears," revealing the hidden truth to everyone.
I Told You Everything is grounded in the idea that no information ever truly disappears. The unspoken, the suppressed, the hidden, or the forgotten will inevitably surface. In this installation, an abstract meadow is paired with a recorded performance by two children. Their movements, inspired by the bodily forms that emerge in Somatic Experiencing Therapy, serve as a reminder that the body itself is an archive, carrying and revealing what words often cannot.
Photo credit: Kayhan Kaygusuz for Hara
For So Long
2023
Fans, metal cubes and parachute fabric
Varying sizes
Commissioned by Hara
A recurring theme in Başöz’s practice is the cube, often used to represent the rational mind. Through different strategies, she seeks to transcend the cube’s limitations, offering alternatives. This exploration led to a collaboration with sculptor Canan Bozbağ, who provided leftover metal cubes from her own work. Using parachute fabric and a fan, Başöz examines the possibilities of freedom and expansion while confronting the solidity of the cube itself.
Leap into the Future
2024 Yanköşe Public Art Edition
Site specific print installation
Commissioned by Yapı Kredi Culture, Arts and Publishing and Yanköşe
Sena Başöz’ project Leap into the Future revolves around bodies of young and healthy athletes, incarnating the future of the newly founded Republic, clipped out of photographs from the Yapı Kredi Historical Archive Selahattin Giz Collection.
Encompassing 35,000 photographs, for the most part taken, and merely collected for the remaining proportion by Selahattin Giz (1914-1994) himself, this collection is extremely significant in terms of documenting the social, economic and political atmosphere in Turkey in the first half of the 20th century.
Titled Leap into the Future (2023), this work derives its inspiration from Leap into the Void (1960), the iconic photographic work by French artist Yves Klein (1928-1962). It blends the staging, and emancipating sensation sparked by the movement that emanates from Klein’s photograph with the pictures of athletes Başöz recovered from within the archive.
Similar to those often encountered across monuments dating from the same period of the Republic’s infancy, these young athletes’ bodies congregate in this installation, caught in graceful moments of freedom, unrestrained by gravity, reminiscent of the movements of birds disencumbered from the weight of history.
Video credit: Huo Rf
