
Orientation is the perception of space through the body. It is a body language, depending on the body to inhabit space. Ceylan Öztrük, who received the 2022 Swiss Art Award, proposes a rethink of spatiality through disorientation. As disorientation involves becoming an object or a sculpture, Wearing the Angles, Kissing the Room is a narrative on the clash and meld, between the body and the building, the person and the institution, the bent and the stiff.
While a text constitutes the texture of the work expanding into the space, a dreamy perception is created by stage installations. Wearing the Angles, Kissing the Room produces the moment of bypassing to realign the orientation between the bodies and constructed spaces in order to create a different orientation towards things. Disorientation does not remain a state – it becomes an element of the body, allowing the body to converge with the building. As we stay in this moment to adjust another approach, an orientation on how we will inhabit the space, how the space will inscribe itself in the body. In an understated performance, the moment of losing oneself is staged through purposeful disorientation.
Ceylan Öztrük is an artist, lives and works in Zürich. She completed her practice-based PhD (2016) in Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University (Istanbul) that she initiated her subject in Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna at Post Conceptual Art Practices in 2014. She received her graduate (MFA-2011) and undergraduate (BFA-2006) degrees from the Fine Arts Faculty, Sculpture Department at Anadolu University. She received the Swiss Art Award 2022. Some of her exhibition and performances are Wearing the Angles, Kissing the Room, Gessnerallee, Zürich (2023); Sculpture Garden, Geneva Biennial, Curated by Devrim Bayar, Geneva (2022); Self-specular, a moment, Galerie PhilippZollinger, Zürich (2022); Matter of non, FriArt Kunsthalle Fribourg, Fribourg (2021); Orientalien, Gessnerallee Theatre, Zürich (2020); Am a Mollusk, too; re/producing tangents, Longtang, Zürich (2020), IV. Berliner Herbstsalon, Berlin (2019); Oriental Demo, My Wild Flag Festival, Stockholm (2019); Call me Venus, Mars Istanbul (2016).
CONCEPT, ARTISTIC DIRECTION, STAGE DESIGN Ceylan Öztrük PERFORMANCE Adél Juhász, Deborah Macauley, Ikenna Nwaogu, Ceylan Öztrük CHOREOGRAPHIC COLLABORATION Manuel Scheiwiller MUSIC Berk Çakmakçı, Mertcan Mert COSTUMES Prototypes LIGHTING DESIGN, TECHNIQUE Demian Jakob OUTSIDE EYE Cosima Grand COLLABORATION SCRIPT Merve Ünsal PRODUCTION Rabea Grand, Paelden Tamnyen
Funded by Stadt Zürich Kultur, Migros Kulturprozent Zürich, SIS – Schweizerische Interpretenstiftung, Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Stiftung, Co-production and guest performance made possible by Freischwimmen Network, funded by the Federal Government Comissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the German Association of Independent Performing Arts’ program “Verbindungen fördern”, and realized with the kind support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Thanks to Kunstgiesserei St. Gallen. Media partners: Arts of the Working Class, Berlin Art Link, Kulturplakatierung, Missy Magazine, Rausgegangen, tip Berlin, taz.die tageszeitung.