Mehtap Baydu

The exhibition highlights Baydu’s long-standing multimedia and performative practice, through which she explores culturally shaped images of gender and roles, as well as their transformation over time. She deliberately transgresses boundaries in her works, assuming so-called "male roles", expanding traditional "female roles", and playfully engaging with the gaze of the Other upon the self. Baydu investigates the meanings of various objects and symbols, along with their narratives across different cultures, addressing topics such as the dowry tradition in Turkish and Kurdish contexts, proverbs, religious symbols, and everyday actions. A recurring element is her reference to rituals developed in female communities — rituals of trust, hope, and silence.

In her performances, Baydu creates spaces where intimate memories and symbolic actions intertwine. In her poetic choreographies, she explores themes of visibility, vulnerability, and solidarity, transcending national and cultural boundaries. She frequently uses her own body as a starting point to reveal and deconstruct socio-political expectations placed on the female body.

Baydu uses role-playing — sometimes as a man and sometimes as a mythological figure — and the veiling of her body with traditional textiles and materials as a means of self-empowerment. In her exhibition, Let Your Rain Fall (Kendi Yağmurunu Yağdırmak) she brings together new and older works in a transboundary experience that moves beyond prefabricated narratives. Rather than providing clear-cut answers, her works approach the sensitive politics surrounding the female body, questions of migration, and autobiographical positioning in poetic and playful ways. They also address traditional role models within conservative social and political systems. Her works can be seen as quiet yet powerful homages to the unspoken desires that are still carried and shared.

About Mehtap Baydu

Mehtap Baydu is a performance and installation artist. She focuses her work on gender roles and sensitive religious and political issues in cross-cultural contexts. She actively involves audience members in her performances, challenging them with symbolic objects and situations. Baydu studied sculpture at Hacettepe University and the Kunsthochschule Kassel. She has received numerous awards, including fellowships from the Robert Wilson Foundation and the Tarabya Cultural Academy. In 2021, she received the Art Prize from the Städtische Galerie Nordhorn. She has had solo exhibitions of her work, including The Forest Was Still Naked at Galeri Nev, Ankara, in 2022, Permeability at the Städtische Galerie Nordhorn in 2022, and Cuma at Edition Block in Berlin in 2018. In 2024, Baydu was a guest professor at the Academy of Arts, Berlin. She lives and works in Berlin.