Mehtap Baydu
Atem

2022

EB111

Linen case with 8 photographs, video (18 min, on USB stick), digital picture frame
Linen case: 11,3 x 35,6 x 39,5 cm, photographs: 32 x 21,4 cm

Edition of 7, signed and numbered

1.800 Euro

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The edition ATEM by the artist Mehtap Baydu. A digital picture frame, on which a video of the performance is shown, stands on the green linen case made for it
Artist Mehtap Baydu sitting inside a Berlin shop window during her performance ATEM, inflating a large translucent balloon over 18 days using only her breath. Two people in front of the window are watching her.
Close-up of the artist Mehtap Baydu during her performance ATEM, during which she inflates a large transparent balloon in a Berlin shop window for 18 days using only her breath.
Close-up of the artist Mehtap Baydu during her performance ATEM, in which she inflates a large transparent balloon in a Berlin shop window for 18 days using only her breath. The artist is pressed against the wall by the ever-growing balloon and can almost no longer be seen.
The artist Mehtap Baydu during her performance ATEM, in which she inflates a large transparent balloon in a Berlin shop window for 18 days using only her breath. The artist is pressed against the wall by the ever-growing balloon and can almost no longer be seen.
The artist Mehtap Baydu during her performance ATEM, in which she inflates a large transparent balloon in a Berlin shop window for 18 days using only her breath. The artist is pressed against the wall by the ever-growing balloon and can no longer be seen.

    Print photographs: LAMARTS, Istanbul on Hahnemühle UltraSmooth paper.

    Atem (breath) is based on a performance that Mehtap Baydu staged as part of the 4th Berlin Autumn Salon from October 30 to November 17, 2019 at the Scotty e.V. project space in Berlin-Kreuzberg. For eighteen days, an audience informed in advance and random passers-by were able to watch the artist every day from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. through the store window as she slowly filled a room-sized transparent plastic balloon with her breath in the 15 cubic meter space. The mostly unconscious process of breathing – a person breathes around 20,000 times a day, moving around twelve cubic meters of air – was consciously, visually and measurably demonstrated in the long-term performance. In the repeated, meditative gesture of exhaling, breathing itself is made visible as a process. As in most of Mehtap Baydu’s often performative works, the focus is on borderline experiences and the artist’s own body as a mediator between the work and the audience. In the 2015 video performance Cocoon-Koza, Baydu knitted herself into a life-size cocoon in front of the camera for 18 days until her body had completely disappeared inside. Here, paradoxically, it is her own breathing air that slowly and literally “takes her breath away”: As the balloon completely fills the space towards the end of the performance with its volume filled with breathable air, the body of the now “breathless” artist is increasingly pushed to the edge until it, like the space itself, almost disappears for the audience. The edition includes a digital picture frame, a USB stick with an 18-minute film documenting the 18-day performance in its various phases, as well as eight photographs of the performance signed by the artist.
    Text: Eva Scharrer