Biometric Hermit
Naz Balkaya
17 May 2019
7-9pm (one day only event)
The Change Room
What does it mean to struggle as an emerging artist and curator in an ants nest such as London? Through this new performance, the artist Naz Balkaya is sharing her experience of dual ‘identity’, being an artist-curator in a foreign and capital city. A sound piece is leading you from room to room, from the outside to the inside, from hallway to toilet.
How overdue, over-criticised, and oversold is institutional critique? Why do institutions still marginalise different backgrounds, and more so, other experiences that fall just short of being or looking like 'the ideal candidate'? Who are we when entering the white cube, and who do we become upon retreat? As a Turkish cultural producer, the artist reflects on her experience as an outsider within the racist and pseudo-empowered structures that represent the local art scene, and highlights the conditions of being an immigrant and its correlation with feelings of displacement.
Duration: 30 mins
Performance times: 7.30pm, 8.30pm
Booklet handout (*interview with artist Naz Balkaya enclosed)
About the artist
Naz Balkaya is a Turkish artist-curator based in London and a recent graduate from the MFA Curating at Goldsmiths University. Her projects generally promote collaboration, solidarity and safe networking, representing the millennial conditions and supporting emerging artists. Currently, Balkaya works as an assistant curator for Performistanbul and is their UK representative. She is the founder of the non-profit feminist institution In-Flux.., which operates in a van, that commutes and hosts exhibitions within the UK.
Artistically, Balkaya works through her artistic and curatorial collective, Panicattack Duo, which she established with Cypriot artist Emilia Demetriou in 2014. Panicattack mostly work with performance, video and photography, but also curate the series of performance exhibitions Razzmatazz since 2015. Recently, Panicattack have been selected as a part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2018, where they staged the durational performance piece “Nothing Really Mattress”, through literal and performative activity upon a double size mattress which is their ‘mobile studio’. They also consider the mattress as an exhibition space which enabled them to curate a series of events, talks and workshops on their mobile studio.
Balkaya is a member of Disorder Live Art where she works as an assistant curator. DisORDER is a group of international artists, theorists and curators who met at the RCA and Goldsmiths University, London. The group represent practices that are based on research that usually take the form of live performances, installations and public art exploring human rights, race and social injustice, power and gender, class and minorities as well as challenging oppressive institutional structures. DisORDER explores the role of the audience through creating interactive art, where spectators have the opportunity to break the division between the artist and themselves through the act of participation.
Links and website:
https://www.southlondongallery.org/events/panicattack-duo-nothing-really-mattress-performances/
http://panicattack-duo.squarespace.com
https://www.instagram.com/nazbalkaya/
http://hero-magazine.com/article/132740/panicattack-selected-by-kirsty-ogg/
