Video performance 2025

Nezaket Ekici walks slowly into a four-walled room covered in detailed jungle prints. Her own body is clothed in a long black costume made of hand-painted artificial leaves—designed, cut, and sewn by the artist herself. Potted plants hang from the ceiling and sit on wooden pedestals; the ground is covered in soil. A calm sonic backdrop of birdsong and operatic voice is interwoven into this world. The artist’s own voice takes part in this separate aural atmosphere—highlighting the combination between nature and simulation. Spiegel der Natur / Mirror of Nature asks the audience to consider the human’s position as both part of, and separate from, nature. The cultivated plants in the performance—borrowed from Ekici’s neighbor and usually found in her studio stairwell—emphasize how even “natural” elements are curated and mediated. The fact that the artist finds them within a context of natural cultivation, as opposed to natural growth. The cube itself is lined with artificial plant prints, and Ekici wears a costume of similarly fake foliage, creating a staged imitation of wildness. She begins to care for the plants—watering them, touching them, rolling in the soil shaped by human hands. Ekici moves between artificiality and nature, questioning their boundaries through short written poems placed throughout the space. At one point she pauses and reads one outloud:“we create images of nature, because we want to be a part of it.” This short aphorism is a gesture towards the fleeting contact Ekici seeks: something “real” is catalyzed in the unnatural. The two are combined in a symbiotic dialectic, and their identities both reflect and reinforce each other. As Ekici lies in the dirt, she uncovers more small poems she has buried, each reflecting on nature’s confinement, its turn to artifice, and our desire to reclaim authenticity. As the performance continues, her face and hands are caked in dirt. She holds the plants with reverence, hugging one close while reading a poem aloud. In the end, she returns everything to its place—only now, words hang from branches, and messages lie in the soil. The performance transforms this constructed space into a living mirror of our entangled relationship with nature. (Text: Jono Wang Chu)

Wallpaper, soil, plants, vases and pots, costume, paper, spotlights, gopro, wooden pedestals, watercan, watersprayer,

12:58 min. HD MP4, 16:9, sound, colour

Camera and Editing: Branka Pavlovic Sound Design: Mladjan Matavulj Singing: Nezaket Ekici Assistant for Technique and Set Installation: Henry Cash-Finlay Assistant: Mathew Ricci Costume Design and Cut: Nezaket Ekici Costume Painting: Nezaket Ekici Text: Nezaket Ekici, Andreas Dammertz Thanks to: Elisabeth Ehmann fort he Flowers Helle & Jørgen Smidstrup Prof. Dennis Shirley