Performance Installation 2015/2024 Presented at: Before All Runs Out: Cosmos of New Values, Sinopale 9th, Sinop Biennial, Turkey 23.9-31.10.2024

Note: “Crossing Wonderland 2024_Sinop” is based on Nezaket Ekici’s 2015 Performance of the same name from Kunstmuseum Ravensburg, but in Sinop in 2024 she presented the performance in the context of the Sinope Biennale. The performance took place outside in the courtyard of a prison that has since been converted to a museum. Nezaket Ekici stages a poetic transformation of the familiar into the surreal. Emerging from a circular platform, a dozen human arms and hands reach upward—visible only from the elbow—forming a dense, living flowerbed. The illusion is immediate and disorienting: what at first glance may resemble blooming plants reveals itself to be a field of outstretched limbs. Ekici is dressed in a satin pink costume, she moves atop the platform, posing, stroking the arms with a towel, watering and wrapping string around them, and more. Throughout the performance, Ekici attends to the performers beneath the surface as if they were real plants. She waters the hands, steadies those that begin to droop with string. Her gestures are quiet acts of maintenance and care, creating a delicate balance between the organic and the artificial, the real and the imagined. Simultaneously, she initiates gestures towards the heavens above—at one point, raising her hands and looking upwards. Placing the body in between ‘heaven’ (what is above), and ‘earth’ (both nature and life beneath), Ekici invokes the body as an existential conduit, mediating both care of nature and a greater spiritual destiny. Despite knowing the flowers are mere arms, the audience is confronted by a reality that treats them as if they are real nature. In this sense, Ekici draws the human form closer in proximity with nature—highlighting our fundamental syncretism as living beings of one Earth. Her continuous care reflects a deeper message: a vision of a sustainable world we seem to have lost. The performance was presented as part of the Sinope Biennale under the title Before All Runs Out: Cosmos of New Values. Ekici’s careful tending of both human and natural forms directly echoes the exhibition’s call to imagine new systems of care and interconnection before ecological and societal collapse. Staging the piece in a former prison adds a further layer of meaning—the circular platform that confines the performers mirrors the architecture of captivity, prompting reflection on how both nature and humanity have been enclosed, controlled, and now urgently require liberation and care. Ekici augments a perspective of human anthropology that is existentially natural: in the same way the plants rely on care, on necessities of food and water, so do humans. Even the platform, which serves as a momentary prison of her six assistant performers, reminds the onlooker of the singularity and exclusivity of our planet. This kind of nature finds itself caged: it is rooted in one place; although it may shift and grow and die, it is confined to this Earth. In this same way, the performers in Ekici’s installation are confined within the round platform, though we see their hands and arms, their identities are disguised and presented only within nature. She calls on the audience to reconsider our roles within nature: as much as we are its caretaker, we are also physically embedded within it. Like flowers which are part of Earth and also nurtured by its sun and water, we too are a part of this precious cycle of life. “Crossing Wonderland 2024_Sinop” is both a physical and symbolic threshold: between body and object, waking and dream, nature and heaven. As the performance unfolds, time slows. The viewer becomes absorbed in the tension between stillness and action, planet and person. Ekici’s careful tending transforms the uncanny into something deeply human—a meditation on our existential responsibilities as caretakers and as inhabitants of nature. (Text Edited: Jono Wang Chu) Performers: Nezaket Ekici with Ali Arbag, Elif Dervis, Ilayda Kök, Irem Korkmaz, Kübra Caliskan, Özge Gön

Cylindrical garden platform, grass, towel, gardening sticks, water spritzer, watering can, string

Live Performance: 45 min. Video Duration: 16:08min

Camera: Ahmet Aksu, Ipek Hamzaoglu Drone Camera Operator: Emrah Güney Editing: Ipek Hamzaoglu Sounddesign: Erkan Akliman, Nezaket Ekici, Sound BBC Library Lightdesign : Techizart Carpenter: Semih Akaya Usta, Ihsan Usta Blacksmith: Tayfun Ertürk Flowershop: Sinop Peyzaj Cicekcilik ve Fidancilik Costumedesign: Nezaket Ekici Dress Cutter: Belgü Moda Evi Istanbul