Sena Başöz (b. 1980, Turkey) explores gestures of care and compassion in The Box (2020) as hands gently stroke a woman’s hair revealing symbolic objects hidden in her locks.

The film consists of a sequence of various objects hidden inside thick, dark, long hair being picked over sometimes by a male and sometimes by a female hand. In the video compassion and care trigger phenomena in contrast such as concealment and revelation, holding on and letting go, death and life.

Artist Q&A

Where are you from and how did you become interested in moving image work?
I am from Turkey and I live in Istanbul.  The departure point of my practice has been the friction I was feeling between my body and the immediate space I lived in. Feeling a strong alienation to the office space of the 9 to 6 job I was working at right after finishing my undergraduate degree, I started making a series of performative videos expressing my fish-out-of-water status in a business plaza. I bought a camera just to document my life in that corporate environment. It worked like a visual diary. I was holding on to the transformative healing power of expression.

What inspired/influenced you to make the work?
The Box consists of a sequence of various objects hidden inside thick, dark, long hair being picked over sometimes by a male and sometimes by a female hand. In the video, compassion and care trigger phenomena in contrast such as concealment and revelation, holding on and letting go, death and life. My work focuses on healing processes after cases of trauma evolving out of the importance of care, the ways nature self-regenerates creating a balance in the long run and the organism's capacity to repair itself. The hair is dead tissue extending from our living body, so I see it as a space in-between life and death just like soil. In the video the hair looks like an uncanny landscape. I thought about and experimented with what this landscape can host. Human hair is also similar to animal fur and reminds me of our creature-hood. Thus, it makes me question our relationship to nature and each other as human beings.

What are you working on at the moment?
Currently I am working on the publication of my artistic research and recent solo show in Basel. Towards the end of 2020, I spent two months in Basel as a resident artist. I focused on what the city holds in its archives and what flows through without being archived. I conducted interviews with archivists of important archives of the city and people with immigrant backgrounds to explore transnational cultures of memory that extend from Basel to Turkey. I took the Rhine river as a metaphor and created an installation and a new video piece. The book will bring together the interviews.

Her artwork focuses on healing processes after cases of trauma evolving out of the importance of care, the ways nature self-regenerates creating a balance in the long run and the organism's capacity to repair itself.

Sena Başöz (b. 1980, İzmir, Turkey) is an artist and filmmaker living and working in Istanbul. Başöz’s artwork focuses on healing processes after cases of trauma evolving out of the importance of care, the ways nature self-regenerates creating a balance in the long run and the organism's capacity to repair itself.

Her recent solo exhibitions include Ars Oblivionis, Lotsremark Projekte, Basel (2020); A Consolation, Krank Art Gallery, Istanbul (2020); Hold on Let go, MO-NO-HA Seongsu, Seoul (2020) and On Lightness, DEPO Istanbul(2018). She has participated in group exhibitions such as Transitorische Turbulenzen, Kunstraum Dreiviertel, Bern (2020); Studio Bosporus, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2018); Quiet Dialogue, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum (2018) and Sharjah Biennial Offsite Exhibition: Bahar, Istanbul (2017). She participated in artist residencies at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2017), Atelierhaus Salzamt, Linz (2010) and Delfina Foundation, London (2020).

In Rehana Zaman’s (b. 1982, UK) Sharla Shabana Sojourner Selena (2016) six female narrators share personal experiences around race and gender in an audition roll call, some scripted some spontaneous, intercut with moments of pleasure and contact in a beauty salon.

Their testimonies describe perverse scenarios where racialisation and gender dynamics inflect the encounters of each protagonist in the workplace, religious spaces or sexual trysts. The script for the film references group dynamics (Experiences in Groups by W.R Bion) and experimental feminist films (Soft Fiction, by Chick Strand and What You Take for Granted by Michelle Citron). Stories are intercut with moments of physical contact in a beauty salon, a space where inter-corporeality and pleasure is offered as an alternative to the anxieties of collective experience.

Rehana Zaman (b. 1982, Heckmondwike, UK) is an artist and educator whose work questions how social dynamics are produced and performed. Her films speak to the entanglement of personal experience and social life, where moments of intimacy disrupt cultural orthodoxies, state coercion and capital. Projects include British Art Show 9, Trinity Square Video, Canada and Serpentine Projects, London, UK (2021). Her work has been shown widely at art institutions, non-art spaces and film festivals in the UK and Internationally. In 2019 she co-edited Tongues with Taylor Le Melle published by PSS and was shortlisted for the Film London Jarman Award.

For further information on the artist click here

Selected by Bonniers Konsthall

What inspired/influenced you to make the work?
Approaching a Ghost is an attempt to capture the memory of my friend Meril and our time together far away from home in a remote city in Thailand. Meril and I met when we were about to undergo gender confirmation surgery, something we had longed for most of our lives. We awaited an uncertain future and supported each other in our worries. Three years after the operation, Meril decided to end her life. She was my only other trans-friend and I had always mirrored myself in her. Then and there, I felt my world fall apart. 

Some years later, I decided to travel back to the city where I had met Meril. I brought my camera with the intention of capturing the memory of us. There, I realized that my self-perception had changed and the elapsed time had affected my memories, so instead I found a void after us. The people I knew were gone. Left was only the familiar scenery with backdrop-looking buildings, streets and vegetation; thereto the absence of our presence.

I was caught by the empty environments that seemed like places stuck between reality and memories. I decided to catch this atmospheric emptiness with my camera and departed on an intriguing spatial exploration. I was drawn to abandoned places such as the worn-down hospital where we underwent the surgery, a desolate hotel and the tidal lands—in constant transition—all loaded with immense significance to me.

Approaching a Ghost has allowed me to process my personal experiences and I have found the means to address existential concerns, such as who am I and who do I want to be? Always having been anxious of speaking out loud, I have now found my voice; even if whispering. I want to tell my story and in doing so commemorate Meril and all those who didn’t have the energy, or were not allowed, to continue. 

Victoria Verseau (b. 1988) is a Swedish artist and filmmaker working in a variety of media ranging from moving image to sculpture, installation and performance. She lives and works in Stockholm and her artistic practice revolves around the exploration of issues of gender, identity and social structures. The starting point for her work is her personal experiences of being a trans- and a new woman. She often investigates ideas of transition and recollection, as well as the ambivalence in telling personal stories, while at the same time being protective of one’s integrity.

Victoria Verseau is currently working on the feature film Meril that will premiere in the coming years. She has had several solo exhibitions in Sweden. Her films have been screened internationally, her most recent being Exercise One (2016) and The Session (2015). In 2017, she received the prestigious Anna Prize for her work with film, a stipend awarded by Women in Film & Television and UN Women Sweden.

For further information on the artist click here