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MIMIKO
Visual artıst, ıntımate outsıder, subjectıve narrator
RECENT PROJECTS
About MIMIKO
Mimiko is an artist based in Istanbul who mostly produces videos, photography series, artist’s books and textual and performative works, focusing on connecting to/through the body and transcending the body.
The first decade of her practice focused on gender roles and socially constructed identities through a subjective documentary approach. For the past five years she has been working towards exploring the expression of the inner flow — ‘innergy’, an amalgam of inner and energy — in human bodies and water-bodies.
By conducting a primarily visual and bodily experience-based artistic research and drawing connections between constructed binaries and dichotomies, she questions global narratives about gender roles, identities and more recently about climate and ocean emergencies with a multidisciplinary approach, aiming for creating a disturbance of predisposed personal and social structures.
Currently / Upcoming
‘RESIDENT SOIL’ Group show / Eldem Sanat Alanı, Eskişehir
Aug 31 – 11 May
‘STATES OF EARTH’ Group show / Yapı Kredi Galeri, Istanbul
Sep 5 – March 30
Taviloğlu Koleksiyonu – Bir Koleksiyoner Hikayesi / Istanbul
Sep 21 – Dec 15
Carbon Tierra Biennial / Ptolemaida, Greece
Sep 27-29
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS & SCREENINGS
Artist Statement
Over the years, the body has been central to my art practice: human bodies, migrating bodies, emotional bodies, water bodies…
bodies that struggle
bodies that drown
bodies that float, that survive
bodies that ache, bodies that heal
bodies that kick, that knock over the rocks across millions of human years
bodies that endure
bodies that yearn
My earlier works demonstrate a specific interest in the human body as the most common outward manifestation of the sexual, psychological, emotional and sociological identities. Furthermore, my artistic research is deeply rooted in my own bodily experiences which includes a variety of physical activities such as Muay Thai, snowboarding, wave surfing. My interest in the power (and inability) of the human body (of all forms and capacities) and its potential to be the meditator to connect with non-human bodies grew with the practice of these various physical activities.
bodies that flow
bodies that break
bodies that break free
Refuting heteronormative perspectives and meditating on the complex human-nonhuman entanglements have led me to reflect in terms of interconnections and flows between supposedly separate entities —human and nonhuman— as I have been working towards exploring the expressions of flow or innergy as I like to call it: an amalgam of inner and energy.
Water can be said to be an intrinsic embodiment of the flow and in the new phase of my art practice I’ve been focusing on water-bodies. I’ve been interested in investigating what flow is as a concept that helps represent and interpret the world and relations with a more fluid, ever-changing and non-binary approach.
bodies that wave
waves that embody
Over the years, building upon various works investigating ways to connect to and through the body, my primary objective shifted towards transcending the body and my approach from a solitary practice of contemplating and reflecting towards one that creates collective experiences and knowledges in the new phase of my practice.
