Performance Installation 2023 Premiere: December 2, 2023 Live Performance: 4-6 p.m. As part of the group exhibition, “Hello Lübeck” Dialogues with the Kunsthalle St. Annen, Lübeck, December 2, 2023-July 28, 2024

Working with the collection at Kunsthalle St. Annen, Ekici selects a painting „Stillleben mit Mops und Hähnen“ (Still Life with Pug and Roosters) by the German Artist Willem Grimm (originally format of the painting: 70 × 100 cm, oil on canvas, 1951/53) and rebuilds it as a monumental 200 × 300 cm acrylic painting. But instead of presenting the work as a static object, she cuts it apart; she divides the image into large, irregular fragments that echo the kind of disintegration history represents: a series of memories and systems torn from their origin, remade through time and social involvement into something greater or other than. These fragments of the painting are then scattered throughout the museum building displaced like clues waiting to be found. In her performance installation “Searching Another”, Nezaket Ekici explores the existential tension between fragmentation and one’s wholeness. Drawing on her tradition of engaging artistically with grids, puzzles (forms and structures of arranged integrity and solidity), “Searching Another” stages the act of reassembling a historical painting. Piece by piece Ekici brings into being a poetic and physical meditation on the theme of human connection. Ekici highlights how meaning is enforced through social interaction: we understand the wholeness of the painting only because it is put together. In a literal sense, Ekici and her assistants construct a symbol that has history and place by coming together—it is a piece that requires the coalescence of human forces, of human people. Invited by the museum to build a performance-installation which could revitalize and integrate people, Ekici sought to use the puzzle form as an opportunity to emphasize one’s relationality to others, and their relationality to art. On December 2, 2023, Ekici conducted her live performance at the Kunsthalle, accompanied by several performers. Each performer carries an oversized fragment of the painting and moves independently through the museum, weaving through its architecture and visitors like nomadic travellers. Each one of them appears in a different corner or hall of the museum; in isolation, they emerge towards the common area in which the puzzle will eventually be laid down and made complete. Their movements constitute a kind of magnetism: as isolated fragments their meanings are reduced to crypticisms—only in their proximity to each other in specific-place are they essential, their social importance realized. As they move, they shout aloud single words they associate with their fragment—creating a chorus of isolated meanings that hint at a collective whole. These spoken associations give each fragment a provisional voice, suggesting that even when separated, parts still carry stories. Gradually, the performers converge toward a destination room. There, a square platform on the floor becomes the site of reassembly. Through a free, practiced choreography of lying atop and between each other—the bodies stitched together like a tapestry—the performers arrange their fragments to form a new, collective image. But this recomposed whole is not rigid. It shifts and breathes, informed by the positions of the bodies, by perspective, by the imprecision of memory. As Ekici notes, art should not just hang on the wall, but be moved. In the process of moving all their bodies like parts into one whole, Ekici has metaphorically allowed the human to adopt the position of the painting and vice versa. She establishes from a static history, birth and creation: not as a still artifact, but as a process of searching, of arranging, of making meaning through interaction. Beyond the performance itself, Searching Another extends into the museum space as a participatory invitation. After the painting is complete, the performers stand around their creation, each person dressed from head to toe in black, and begin chanting. What looks like an arrangement of mourning becomes one of pride and self-realization: they face thei

black costume, painted puzzle pieces

Live Performance: 2 Hours Video performance: 19:31min

Nezaket Ekici “Searching Another” Performance Installation 2023 Curator: Dr. Noura Dirani Idea, concept: Nezaket Ekici Painting: Nezaket Ekici, Elmas Ekici Performance and implementation: Nezaket Ekici with Florina-Maria Baila, Ramin Massoum, Ann-Kristin Schmidt, Mirko Schlicht. Emely Steiner, Baher Eisa, Anja Daniel, Sina Drammer, Corinna Wagner Performance assistant: Felicitas Hommel Production/technology: Jesper Niemann Camera: Josef Rapaj with camera assistants Editing: Jose