Karakter bürünmek

Karakter bürünmek

In a performance framework, I clothe myself in multiple dresses, which I have collected from women representing different professions and social classes. I wear these garments on top of one another, piece by piece. As I slip myself, one body, into another body, a thick layer of overlapping dresses burgeons around me. Once clothed in all dresses, I attempt to remove them in one piece. 

Once I undress the nested garments, their volume creates a three-dimensional, cocoon-like object – leaving testimony to my existence and the existence of the women by whom the clothes were once worn. 

As I toured different parts of the city, I met many different women from different nations and cultures. I asked them for one of their daily garments and gathered these. I also asked them to write a letter relating to the item they gave me. Without any restrictions on the content, the letters are shown together with the clothes in the viewing space. 

Through the nature of this process a platform was created where each of the participants could take action with their writings and find representation within the context of the performance. 

After the piece is performed, the nested dresses represent, as a unit, the women who gave them to me. While each of the dresses takes form over my body during the performance, each of the participants’ individualities and that of the artist also merge into one other, fusing into a new one. The individual identities of the participants are preserved through the presence of the letters.