Şafak Şule Kemancı’s practice embraces fluidity between species and forms: plants, minerals, animals and humans intertwine in trans-subjective entanglements. At the biennial, Kemancı is presenting a soft sculpture on a monumental scale, marked by its hybrid nature integrating both plant and animal attributes. The work inhabits the room and grows in a feral landscape, emerging from windows and doorways, forming an immersive environment that challenges binaries between cultivated and wild, human and non-human, natural and artificial. The shadows cast by the sculpture hint that protection is not about withdrawal or concealment, but about the possibility of sheltering others.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Şafak Şule Kemancı (b. 1975, Istanbul) currently lives and works in Istanbul. In their art practice, Kemancı creates queer ecosystems where intertwined diversity that sprouts with joy, resistance and abundance dissolves normative boundaries and generates novel possibilities. The artist’s solo exhibitions include lean on me earth tree, Ka Atölye, Ankara (2022) and all the birds would come to my garden, Depo, Istanbul (2021). Their group exhibitions include Sex Reenchanted, Heidelberger Kunstverein (2024); Pretty Doomed, Ugly Duck, London (2023); Life, Death, Love and Justice, Yapı Kredi Culture and Arts, Istanbul (2022); A bit of Unruly Complexity, SANATORIUM, Istanbul (2022).
EXHIBITED WORKS
Şafak Şule Kemancı (b. 1975)
Untitled, 2025
Fabric, resin, cement, brass, mixed materials
240 × 500 × 400 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Şafak Şule Kemancı (b. 1975)
Untitled, 2025
Wallpaper
270 × 750 cm
Courtesy of the artist
