ZEYNEP KAYAN

Zeynep Kayan’s artistic practice focuses on exploring the variations of a repetitious structural setup through photography, video and sound pieces in relation to portraiture and performance. In her previous work, she reveals the change and the desire for movement embedded in the production process as she disturbs the surfaces of images. Her works that are produced for Temporary Sameness carries the movement from the surface of the image to the ‘within’ by trying to treat the body as yet another material.

The video works and the screenshot photographs from them complete each other and aim to exhaust the possibilities of material and movement. Kayan takes the camera as a mirror and watches her own body during her experiments with movement; in the recorded processes of temporary experimentation, spontaneous elements intertwine with setup choreographies. While the audience encounters with Kayan’s simultaneous decisions, the screenshots represent the selected moments from these processes and the image transforms into a material that is repeated, deconstructed and divided.

Kayan, in interaction with objects like pipes, mirrors, scissors, heat insulators in her almost performative videos, sometimes mimics these objects, tries to fit into the voids they create and at other times hides behind them. The body, which defines itself through the surrounding objects and is the source of movement doesn’t represent a portrait of Kayan but is rather an indifferent, neutral figure without an identity. During movement experiments in empty spaces, the posture cannot help but blend in with the materials used, while the objects lose their functions and turn into mere matter. The videos, in which it is not clear where the body is positioned, play with the viewer’s sense of space: Is the body stuck in a corner, is it upside down, is it laying or is it standing up?

Zeynep Kayan (1986, Ankara) graduated from Communication and Design Department of Bilkent University and got her MA degree in Fine Arts Department of MaHKU in Utrecht, Netherlands. She was the co-founder of independent art space ‘Torun’ in Ankara. Her solo shows: Constructed (Zilberman Gallery, Istanbul, 2016) and Uncomplete (Zilberman Gallery, Istanbul, 2013). Selected group shows and collaborations: CONCEALED (Kasa Galeri, Istanbul, 2018) Until Finding the Source of the Water (with Özgür Atlagan, Salt Galata, 2018); The Library (tete, Berlin, 2017); NevGeneration: Amusement Park (Galeri Nev, 2015); Pull the Rope We’re Downstairs (with Burcu Bilgiç, Zilberman Projects—Istanbul, 2015; Torun, Ankara, 2014), Untitled Original lecture performance (Field Meeting, 2015, ACAW, New York, 2015); Joyful Wisdom (Rezan Has Museum, 2013); Offside Effect, 1^st Tbilisi Triennial (Center of Contemporary Art, Tbilisi, 2012); Uncanny Encounters (Istanbul Modern, 2011). She won the second prize for her Untitled dummy book at Kassel Dummy Book Awards in 2017. This book got published by Akinabooks and launched at Unseen Amsterdam 2018. Kayan lives and works in Ankara/İstanbul.