Özgür Demirci presents a story of a journey towards the source of spiritual, physical and historical wounds and healing that come to life with a person and / or acquired later. It turns the points where the wound and ointment meet and separate into a two-channel performative video with two different texts and the participation of specially designed sound and music for each. Starting from bodily healing, he realizes the parts of social, environmental, political and spiritual wounds under the skin and turns to the issues that feed them. Battles were fought, lost and “won”. When the journey is interrupted with anticipation, uncertainty gives rise to isolation. The days, which are all identical, take freedom under captivity and life is forced to lead horizontally. Healing as a method of coping with all that is left behind is made possible only by standing up. As the disease runs parallel to the ground, healing draws a vertical path from the soil to the sky. The wound’s road map forms hills made up of hollows and mounds in nature. When the sensory organs are unable to fulfill their duties, just like the soil that dries up when water is withdrawn, the only place oxygen can enter is through the removed scab on the wound. The pain felt turns into the oxygen of the one who needs it. The patient creates a ritual by crawling on countless hills, scraping with their nails. The disease, which is presented as a gift and makes sense of the days, follows an invasive path unless its source dries up. In this case, the reassurer and the reassured are the same person. The demolition period follows order. Improvement comes after the order, and then it is replaced by the one behind it. This cycle is similar to that in nature. Healing creates a space to continue. This is a place where reflections are washed away with salt. It is the power that flows into the source of the wound, exists in the matter and moves towards it in the appropriate environment.
Born in Konya in 1982, the artist has received his undergraduate degree from Istanbul Yıldız Technical University’s interdisciplinary arts department and his MFA in C:Art:Media from Valand School of Fine Arts in Göteborg. He is working towards a practice-based PhD at the İzmir Dokuz Eylül University. The artist’s constructs personal and social events using various production means, anchored in the notion of memory. He works mostly in video, performance, objects, installations and site-specific works. Among the exhibitions he has participated in are: “Pandora’s Black Box”, Galata Greek School (2019); “Trumbauer Family Collection”, Kasa Gallery (2017); “Survival Kit”, Space Debris & Cultural Transit Foundation, Russia (2017); 8th Makedox Film Festival, Macedonia (2017); 36th İstanbul Film Festival (2017); “En Masse: Books Orchestrated”, The Center for Book Arts, USA (2017); Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira Le Hasard, Pilot Gallery (2016); “PAS”, Galeri Miza, Albenia (2016); Kassel Dokfest, Kasseler Kunstverein, Germany (2015); “Dedicated”, Öktem&Aykut Galeri (2015); “Stay With Me”, Weserburg Müzesi, Germany (2014); Migrating University of Mickiewicz, Adam Mickiewicz Müzesi (2014); “Check Point”, Depo (2013); “Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Boats”, SALT (2011). He is a member of the Izmir Cultural Platform Initiative (IKPG) and he is one of the founders of the independent art initiative Monitor. Demirci living and working in İzmir.
