Videoperformance 2017

"Prothese" is a video performance by Nezaket Ekici, inspired by a sarcophagus in the Vatican Museums, in which damaged figure reliefs were simply supplemented with marble and plaster. That looked very scary. The artist made casts of body parts and mounted them on the corresponding parts of her body, so that it seemed as if parts had been added or replaced. The human being is a "god of protheses", as Sigmund Freud once remarked. The human body can easily be damaged and its range and efficiency is limited. But he becomes godlike when he puts on all his prostheses. With the metaphor of the "god of protheses", Freud refers to man's desire to leave all deficiencies behind through technology. For example, we have built bicycles and cars that serve as motion prostheses and take us quickly from one place to another. With glasses we see better and with rockets we even move into space. But humans are no god´s. The artist shows herself with marbled casts of her own body. It looks as if parts of her body have been replaced and supplemented by casts. The fragments, like facial parts, elbows, stomach, chest and shoulder parts cover seemingly damaged parts of the body. During her stay at the Artist in Residency Villa Massimo in Rome (beginning of 2017), the artist became aware of figure reliefs in the Vatican Museum, which were restored by covering some damaged or missing parts of the body with marble casts.

PLAAST, Plastic

HD MP4 7:39 min., colour, sound

Camera and Editing: Branka Pavlovic

Sound: Janja Loncar

Assistant: Janusz Debinski