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ARTISTIC OVERVIEW

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ARTISTIC OVERVIEW

Today, the function and the meaning of art exhibitions and performances are just based on liberating the viewers from the audio-visual captivity designed by electronic media and its upmost characteristic of making them withdrawn from real life. It would be a privilege for a viewer to interact personally with the artist and the work of art, to watch the composition with other viewers together  and express his/her own impressions freely. There is a clear-cut difference between to experience the feeling -which could be pleasure, agitation, fear or exhilaration- of viewing an art project and to watch the series of compositions flowing down electronically on the screen. The first one is a process without any mediator, direct and more suitable to human nature; the second one, actually, is an electro-magnetic process which transforms the human nature to a ”melted” substance. Each human being is still free to choose between thes two and protect his natural urges.

20th century is behind us. Now, we are all insatiable to fulfill our technological desires and necessities offered to us in the 21st century and the consumerism is pretending to satisfy these needs. However, do we think that we consumed and personalized everything about the past century? For example, modern and post-modern art forms which have always evolved and diversified themseves? Except the paintings and other art works we bought and put on the walls, did we really understand the art forms which push and change the boundaries of  life, which give a different meaning to every object of everyday life, including a human body? Did we internalized them? Now, by asking this question while we are viewing today’s art forms and performances, we can acquire a new vision and better understanding.

Today’s artist produces and creates from his/her own life. Life is here and present; but it comprises the past and the future. In this matter, the artist actually travels among these three time and place concepts, understands the rapport in them, tries to create new meanings from their incompatibility and harmony. With these forms, materials and processes, first he/she encounters his/her own experiences and then performs his/her own act. Only after, he/she desires to be viewed, followed, understood and commented on by others. The artist would be just satisfied when he/she is in the same time and place with the viewers, when he/she is performing directly for them. The simpliest meaning of the art form ”performance”, which actually started in the second half of the last century, is actually the process of ”now-here-together” between the artist and the spectators.

Günseli Kato started her performances, in which she incorporates different art forms such as paintings, sculptures, music, dance and acting, when she came back to Turkey, from Japan, as a transfer from one identity to another. She clearly emphasized the similarities in traditional and modern periods of these two cultures and the status of ”woman” in both cultures. In her first performance, Kato’s face, body and costumes were very important. Every change of her mimics, the colors and forms of her dresses and how she ritualized the every-day activities were characteristics of her performance. Kato, with this performance, settled her account with her past and stepped into her new life; and the most importantly, she did this in the presence of an audience she chose and shared her feelings with them.

Kato, primarily, draws attention to the visual and stylistic similarities by comparing Ottoman miniatures and Japanese paintings.

Is there also any behavioral similarities along with similar faces, dresses, costume details, and patterns? In these miniatures and paintings, it is very important to notice the similarities of the facial expressions and features of men and women; thus, men and women can only be diversified by their clothings. Eventhough men and women are depicted in a ”celestial harmony” in the miniatures, in reality, the disharmonious setting of this country actually contradicts the miniature. Nowadays, ”consumer’s paradise” is offered to people; such a ”paradise” that has no real life meaning. In this matter, Kato’s performance exhibits the story of a man and woman in their surreal paradise. The main point of the performance is, of course, the metamorphosis, the transformation.

To decipher the meaning of her performance, we need to examine the materials Kato uses. These materials get accumulated during the performance and become a part of a whole (the story of metamorphosis); but they also have independent meanings. Kato’s own body is the main part of the performance. This body expresses the movements of the different lives; body movements of  ”perfect women” defined by modern society and different body movements  of  ”liberated woman” underlined by post-modern culture.

This is, in the same time, the movements of the woman body, still considered in ”traditional” boundaries in these two conventional cultures (Japanese and Turkish), but she dreams for a change, anyhow. Kato consciously uses these two different body movements entwined.

There are different reasons for Günseli Kato to become a performance artist, in the end of 90s.

Firstly, it was not enough for her to express her identity transformation from one culture to another only in her paintings. The real metamorphosis actually occurs in the soul and in the body of a person; and these two should have been seen in her performances directly. She deciphers her soul (in thses 3 forms) by using her body skillfully.

Secondly, Kato wanted to have a meaning of her life in these two male-dominated cultures claiming to be ”modernized”, and she could not do this only with a conventional art form of paintings. There can be different meanings drawn if a ”woman” performer acts as a ”man”, and Kato draws some conclusions by doing this: breaking boundaries between sexual identities, displacing the ”power” traditionally given to men, showing the fragility of female ”identity” put on by the society, and questioning new issues on the unstable basis of her own artistic identity.

The third reason is about the processes/concepts of politics -society and economics. Today’s economic factors re-define woman as a ”narsistic consumerist”. It is generally thought that woman can only survive in a world filled with vanity, artificiality, being kitsch and make-believe. Identity of a woman can only be promoted or undermined by manly capitalism. Kato emphasizes that ”woman” can only re-define herself by going under radical changes.
I think, Marcel Duchamp’s words can best express Kato’s performance and help the spectators to internalize it: ”When I was aiming to escape from me, I knew I was using myself, at the same time. You can call this a little act between ”me” and ”myself”.”

Curator – Beral Madra

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