Gülhatun Yıldırım
Performance Artist
Endurance and Ritualistic Art
Embracing performance art in her artistic practice, in her works, Gülhatun Yıldırım focuses on the concepts of water, essence, belonging, life, death, nature and all kinds of issues shaped around them.
Artist Statment
I am working, researching and producing in the field of performance art. I am attracted to all the matters related to water, life, death and nature. The water I use in my performances refers both to the questions “What is the self? How to reach it?” and to their effects on me.
Before the performance actually happens, I deeply care about the process of researching, observing, and collecting as that is how the performance is created. A feeling I had, a space and time that turns into a personal experience, anything related to nature; my walks in nature, the way I contemplate nature, the space I occupy in nature as well as my observations in nature… And the places; I co-exist with them by breathing in this space, smelling it, just being there with my eyes closed, feeling it, touching it. There are countless ways to recognize things. Being in nature with water, soil, plants, insects and many other things that I may not see under my feet on different paths, watching the moon and the sun hugging the sky and other beings; the sensations of the plants I have in my body…