How do we perceive our own bodies? By looking at it, or by touching it? How close can we actually get to our bodies, or do tend to forget about them? Do we feel we belong to them or do we always distance ourselves from our bodies?
These are not questions humans often ask themselves. Our bodies usually drift away seperately from us. It’s very often that we lose contact with them both physically and mentally. Sometimes we realize that we are following them around yet it does not last long. We start looking out for chances to abandon them again; we draw our eyes further from it and distract our minds with countless other ”things”.
We play cat-in the corner with our bodies.They and us will always stay at seperate places and seperate times.Yet, there is a reciprocal bond between us.We well know that as long as we live, there is no seperation between us;we will have to live a life next to -or into eacher other.Therefore, our relationship with our bodies is one full of ”ignorings”.
Yet,”ignoring” is not a choice but a necessity.Because what we perceive in the mirror is a deficient body.İt hides its inside from us.To go through life smoothly,one needs to accept this deficient look, and even love it.There is nothing rational about us wanting to know each part of our bodies, wanting to know its inside as well as its outside.İt would have been a weird obsession if we were curious about the body parts we had never seen (or will never see).The visible, outer part of our body is dominant over the invisible inner part.The perpection of the outer part delegates the inner part into a world of concepts.For example, blood means something only when its taken outside;İts taken outside;İt gets dramatic form.The heart is likeable when it ”stands for love”not for its biological function.The eye’s color is effective and emotional,etc.Perceiving the body in a world of concepts, ignoring its concrete being means understanding it only in a ”world of meanings”.
When this ”world of meanings”cover over the body, the concrete body disappears.The disapperance creates a foundation for both belief systems and secular philosophies.The concepts associated with the body have comforted it to the extent they constructed a metaphysical side to it.Devoting the body to theology or ontology prepares humans that are obliged to ignore the body to ”ablor” it own concreteness.To know the body from up close in a concrete way is the same as being subjected to something ”disgusting”.Therefore humans run away from their own bodies, feel bashful about them,humiliate its concreteness, and performs violence upon it,aiming at its concreteness.Nietzsche was someone who abhorred those that abhorred the concreteness of their bodies.He had emphasized a need for creating aesthetics for the violence applied on the concrete body and this abhorrance.
At this point, it is possible to regard Çınar Eslek’s exhibition in terms of Nietszche’s esthetical suggestion.The works of the artist recall the concreteness of the body that has been excluded from the history of thought. İnfluenced by a series of surgeries she had been through, the artist destroys the ”world of concepts” association of the body through penture,photos or videos.Leaving all the dramatical stories of the body aside, Çınar Eslek works only on the ”disgusting” side, allowing us associate her attitude with memory.These series of surgical operations, they make up an ”experience – process”in her that they are more than just ”frozen” documents of the operation, they make up an ”experience- evulution”which constitues a work of art;Esthetics start here exactly.
it is useful to emphasize this part as well: if these works transcribe a body through mandatory operations, this means they reflect the esthetics of a necessity in life.Necessities in life do not contain constructions.This exhibition can be related to ”Orlan ‘s surgeries”in terms of the deciphering of the body or making art through bodily pieces.Homever, this approach is compelety not suitable.Çınar Eslek’s act is not one of creating and finalizing one’s urgencies through art, while at the same time orienting one towards the blows on the body.The action reflects the evolution of our compulsory experiences and its accompanying ” spontaneous esthetics”.
Emre Zeytinoğlu