Video Performance 2019

In “Patchwork”, the artist, Nezaket Ekici, sits on a stool in a room covered from floor to ceiling in beautiful red wallpaper; a sequence of gold etchings repeats across it. Next to her is a second chair where you see a mirrored Nezaket, nearly naked. Hanging on the wall in a gold frame is a self-portrait the artist painted herself: she wears a blue and white self-made costume, sitting in this very room with the same colourful wallpaper replicated as its background. At first glance, this ‘Ekici’ in the painting wears a costume of the same colour structure as the real-life Ekici: both consisting of alternating blue and white stripes. However, upon closer inspection, one notices that the positions of the blue and white are switched: in the real room, Ekici’s sleeves are white compared to the blue of the painting, and where the stripes on her costume’s skirt begin with white in the painting, on her body they begin with blue. These two ‘Ekicis’ are not the only ones present however, a third real-life Ekici (made possible by careful camera and film technology) clothed in a skin-tone bodysuit sits across from the first live-version Ekici. The artist utilizes these three Ekicis to represent three different modes of time: the painting as past, the costumed live Ekici as present, and the body-suit Ekici as future. These temporal phases of Ekici present a perspective into the passage of time as a form of existential self-changing: the painted Ekici begins with a striped pattern, that though maintained in colour, is shifted into a new pattern in the present Ekici. This changing of the costume from past to present represents one’s own fluctuating representation. As someone ages, they exhibit different fundamental qualities, beliefs, and attitudes: all qualities which are then witnessed like a ‘costume’ in how they carry themselves. This costume which is self-made is also thus self-changeable and self-evident: one may make and re-make themselves, and the costume documents the person’s manner of existence, while time showcases how it may change. Over the duration of many hours, the video performance captures the present Ekici cutting apart her own costume and handing the tattered strips to the future Ekici. This is an intrinsically dangerous act: the artist threatens herself with the sharp scissors as she cuts, and it also symbolically showcases how existential changes may sometimes cause the destruction of oneself in order to foster the creation of a new, future self. The future Ekici takes the ribbons of the old costume, and using a hand-held sewing machine, makes a new costume to wear. She also takes all of the present Nezaket’s jewelry as well as her shoes. The loud thudding of the machine becomes an incessant reminder of technology’s presence: constantly modelling whatever comes next in the future. “Patchwork’s” last frame shows the incredible result of this transformation: as the present Ekici destroys her costume, the future one has taken its material and made something new; they switch positions in a way, with the present now sitting in the same skin-toned bodysuit the future wore at the beginning of the video. The two Ekicis then turn and face the painting which represents their past hanging on the wall: as if to honour where they have come from and reflect on the profound human changes that one endures over time. (Text: Jono Wang Chu)

Costume; painting; two stools; body suit; scissors; wallpaper; hand-held sewing machine

Video Duration: 8:27min

Camera: Branka Pavlovic Julian David Bolivar Editing: Branka Pavlovic Sound Design: Julian David Bolivar Costume: Nezaket Ekici Assistants: Julian David Bolivar Süleymann