A conversation with Zeynep Çilek Çimen about her Venice Biennale performance

Abdullah Ezik

A conversation with Zeynep Çilek Çimen about her Venice Biennale performance

The 60th Venice Art Biennale, which met with the audience with the theme “Stranieri Ovunque – Strangers Everywhere”, closed recently. As part of the biennale, curator Anastasia Dawson brought together many international artists in the Arsenal Squares and asked them to perform various performances. Zeynep Çilek Çimen from Turkey also took part in this project, which was realized in collaboration with Akneye.

Abdullah Ezik spoke with Zeynep Çilek Çimen about her performance and biennale experience.

The 60th Venice Art Biennale, themed “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere,” showcased a diverse array of artistic expressions. Alongside the main Biennale, AKNEYE presented an off-site project curated by Anastasia Dawson, featuring performances by artists from around the world. As one of the invited participants in this unique initiative, could you share how your journey and preparation process for the AKNEYE project unfolded?

Curator Anastasia Dawson contacted me a few months prior to the project. This was how I got to know Akneye. When we discussed the theme with the curator, we decided that the most fitting form for the project, which would later be exhibited in Dubai, was the eye. This form aligned well with the works I had produced around 2010.

The 60th Venice Biennale masterfully blended artists, historical heritage, and global issues, offering the audience a rich performance experience. What was your experience in Venice like? What did Venice promise you as an artist?

This year, the biennale’s curator, Adriano Pedrosa, focuses on exile, marginalized groups, refugees, the alienated, and the overlooked and forgotten, while making outsider art that falls outside conventional and local artistic traditions more visible.

In this context, my collaboration with the Akneye project, which emphasizes the importance of visibility and uses the eye form, was a perfect fit. I visited the opening of this year’s Venice Biennale. By presenting my performance there now, I am part of the narrative that curator Adriano Pedrosa constructed. Foreigners are everywhere, and I, as a foreign artist, continue to exist everywhere.

Venice, with its magnificent buildings and decorative style, prompts me to repeatedly reflect on the concept of ornamentation, which forms the foundation of my artistic practice and broader artistic context. As someone striving to combine ornamental art’s pattern cycles with the aesthetic approaches of contemporary art, Venice is one of the cities that nurtures my work.

During your performance at AKNEYE Phygital Space, you collaborated with curator Anastasia Dawson. How did this process of dialogue and creative exchange develop? What key themes or challenges did you focus on together during this collaboration?

Akneye is based on the phrase “behind every vision” and highlights the importance of seeing. Being visible in art is one of the most crucial topics in art history. Through this vision, their projects open international doors for artists.

If the act of seeing were to disappear, artistic expression would face significant limitations. Throughout history, artists have harnessed the power of seeing to convey profound messages that captivate audiences both visually and emotionally.

In art, eyes not only serve as channels for literal sight but also symbolize metaphorical perception; they offer a way to grasp the world, gain insights, and develop a deeper understanding of oneself and others. The symbolic expressions of Akneye and my interpretations of symbolic forms in my works act with the desire to revive cultural memory and re-express these elements in a contemporary language, building bridges between the past and the present.

During your performance at the AKNEYE Phygital Space, located just steps away from the Arsenale, you opened the doors of your studio to everyone, revealing your production process. What did including the audience/visitors in this studio process make you think about? How did you conceptualize this work?

Again, we revolve around the theme of seeing and being seen. While performing live, I felt as if someone had placed a camera in my studio to watch me. I am a rather reserved artist when it comes to sharing the production process, so this experience was both questioning and instructive for me. Since it was a performance within the scope of the biennale, I had the chance to meet a quality audience. In this sense, I enjoyed answering detailed questions about my art, having conversations, and meeting new people. The care Akneye showed for its artists was so thoughtful that it serves as an example for all art professionals. I thank them once again for every detail.

Motifs, forms that intertwine the past and the present, and the fusion of the traditional with the contemporary/modern are among the special topics/themes in your art. How do these themes intertwine for you? What does the performance that met the audience at AKNEYE Phygital Space during the biennale tell us in this context?

In my art practice, expression finds its place through rhythm and repeating motifs. By reinterpreting patterns and motifs seen in synagogues, churches, and mosques in a contemporary context, I invite the audience to both embark on a historical journey and explore the complexity of the modern world. Ornamentation, beyond offering aesthetic richness, also emerges as an expression of cultural memory and identity. In this sense, ornamentation creates a multidimensional element that layers both aesthetics and meaning.

In your works, you promise audiences a multilayered world through Søren Kierkegaard’s concept of “repetition” and how repetition can create new meanings. Finally, could you share your thoughts on the concept of “repetition,” which holds an important place in your production practice?

The philosophy of “repetition” emphasizes the cyclical nature of human experience and highlights that repetition is not merely a reproduction of the past but a process of gaining new meaning. We experience cycles and repetitions in life. These cycles are not identical; each is lived to teach us something different. In my works, I try to materialize this idea by embodying the cycles and repetitions in ornamental motifs. With each repetition, I aim to offer the audience a different sensory experience and provoke them to question the recreation of the past in the present. By merging the repetition and pattern cycles of traditional ornamental art with aesthetic approaches of contemporary art, I invite people to think of art as a cultural blend.