02 Sep Put Something On!
In her exhibition ‘Put Something On!’, Günseli Baki combines the images she produces by dismembering her body with their forms and counterparts in nature in order to break the alienation created on her own body by the social and cultural stimuli that women receive from childhood onwards. The photographer, who sees the photograph itself as a mirror in which the person disassembles herself, tries to make us remember in order to break and transform the given codes. The exhibition is also accompanied by self-portraits and texts by 10 artists. The artists’ self-portraits and texts aim to draw attention to the sameness of women’s problems, refer to the cultural dimension of the female body becoming an object of spectacle, surveillance and therefore control, and emphasise the importance of women’s unity under all circumstances against all kinds of competition imposed by the system.
K2 Contemporary Art Center hosted Günseli Baki’s solo exhibition titled ‘Put Something On!’ between 2 September – 16 September 2020.
Other artists whose photographs and texts are included in the exhibition: Dilara Kızıldağ, Gülnaz Bingöl, Hale Güzin Kızılaslan, Meryem Güldürdak, Nesrin Ermiş, Nurgül Öz, Serra Akcan, Sinem Parlak, Sezgi Abalı, Şehlem Kaçar.
ABOUT:
Günseli Baki was born in Istanbul in 1976. She graduated from Istanbul University Faculty of Political Sciences in 1998. She studied design at Accademia Italiana. After completing the Documentary Photography and Master Class programmes of Galata Photography Academy, the photographer’s first personal documentary photography work ‘EV’ was exhibited in various cities and published in different media. In addition to her works questioning the relationship between memory and space, she focuses on the ways in which female identity is constructed in the current cultural context and gender issues. She works in the field of feminist art based on photography.
www.gunselibaki.com
EXHIBITION TEXT:
I was twelve years old when a relative pulled me aside and warned me while I was going down to the beach wearing a t-shirt over my bikini. Why wasn’t I wearing shorts? The imprisonment of women in their own bodies as the object of pleasure of the masculine gaze begins in childhood. The basis of many behaviours that she does without realising it, such as taking her hand to her chest while bending down with the concern of whether her cleavage will be visible, feeling obliged to button the third button of her shirt, lie in the warnings she has started to internalise since her childhood. They are taught that they should be ashamed of their sexuality, pleasure and fluids. In his book ‘Ways of Seeing’, John Berger mentions that women’s self-existence is divided into two. The woman has to watch herself endlessly, she always walks around with her own image. Even when she is walking in a room or crying at the bedside of her father’s dead body, she inevitably sees herself walking or crying. Thus, she begins to see the observer and the observed personalities within the woman as two separate but distinct elements that constitute her identity as a woman. According to Luce Irigaray, the gaze and seeing of the masculine subject brings with it the suppression of the female body. The masculine gaze objectifies the female body and fixes its meaning. Since a woman cannot integrate with her own body, she lives with a mirror in which she constantly watches herself. ‘Put Something On!’ is a voice about liberating the female body by claiming every part of her own body, a set of voices that multiply by sharing…
