Mehtap Baydu

Works

Cocoon
,

2015, Installation

Between 2014 and 2015 Baydu photographed the men that she came into contact with in her everyday life: friends, salesmen, neighbours. The models
could pose as they wished, the artist only asked her subjects for their shirts after the shoot. With the shirts cut into long strips and tied into balls, the artist knitted a cocoon for her own body over a 17-day performance. The biological function of the cocoon, to protect the body hidden within, as well as the prospect of transformation into something else, is intertwined with biographical and feminist references in Baydu’s sculptural performance.

Mehtap Baydu, born in 1972 in Bingöl, lives and works in Berlin. Her works participated in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally a.o. Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Torun, Poland (2016), Art International Istanbul (2014), Künstlerhaus, Stuttgart (2014) and Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (2009).