MEHTAP BAYDU: “KOZA” (16.11.22 – 26.11.22)

Bilsart is hosting Mehtap Baydu’s exhibition entitled “Koza” between November 16-26 in a collaboration with Galeri Nev and Tarabya Cultural Academy.
Designed as a video performance, the work revolves around the cocoon woven by Mehtap Baydu around her naked body, using shirts that belong to thirty-three men with whom she’s interacted as part of daily life experiences. Baydu first took photographs of the owners of these shirts and then based herself at the empty venue of documenta-Halle in Kassel, Germany in order to weave herself a cocoon with the strips made from these shirts. The performance, which took place without an audience for eighteen days, is witnessed by the video recorded by M. Uwe Kroll and Christoph Neugebauer, the photograph taken by the artist herself, and her cocoon.
“Our friends and acquaintances, besides our families, bear central importance for our position in this world. Mehtap Baydu takes pictures of men (friends, acquaintances, colleagues, friends from school, the owner of the kisk where she frequently shops, etc.) who have had a big influence on her life between 2014 and 2015. All men in these photographs can strike a pose of their own choosing; however, they have to give the shirt they’re wearing in the pictures to the artist. Baydu cuts these shirts into long stripes, ties them into a ball, and weaves a cocoon around herself with knitting needles.”
Barbara Heinrich

MEHTAP BAYDU: “ATEM” (03.11.22 – 12.11.22)

Bilsart is hosting Mehtap Baydu’s exhibition entitled “Atem” between November 3-12 in a collaboration with Galeri Nev and Tarabya Cultural Academy.

Bilsart Artist Talk:
Mehtap Baydu & Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt
November 3 Thursday, 4pm

Performance in a storefront with display window in Berlin
Volume of the space: 15 cubic meters, Balloon: 15 cubic meters, Display window: 2.5 meters

Performed in Berlin from 30 October to 17 November 2019, daily from 4pm to 8pm.

A human being breathes appx. 20,000 times a day, transporting some 12 cubic meters of air in the process. We breathe automatically. Breathing is a prerequisite for life for many living organisms. The performance unfolds in a semi-public space (storefront with display window), where, over a period of 18 days, the artist blows up a balloon that, eventually, fills the space completely. The artist’s breath transforms the space, occupying its entire volume.

In this long-term performance Mehtap Baydu tries to show how she fils a space with her breath and, in the same space and same atmosphere, simultaneously deprive herself of her breath and make herself unable to breathe.

Photo: Mehtap Baydu, Atem-Nefes, Video(color with sound), 18’07”, 2019
Edition Block