SAHA provides support for Göksu Kunak's new project at Performa, held between November 1-19, 2023.

Performa 23', curated by Defne Ayas and Kathy Noble, focuses on the relationship between performance and protest. Göksu Kunak's performance Ajaib Mahluqat, scheduled for Sunday, November 19th at 20.00 local time, takes its name from the cosmology book published in Persian in the 13th century titled Acâibü'l-mahlûkāt. Influenced by mythological characters and stories such as jinns, elephant-humans with wings, cow-reptiles, the artist focuses on the relationship of camouflage and self-censorship in relation to the politics and the dictators of an imaginary region.

Göksu Kunak (Ankara, 1985) is an artist, researcher and writer based in Berlin. Kunak’s interest lies in queer methodologies (especially chronopolitics) and hybrid texts that deal with the performative lingo(s) of contemporary lifestyles as well as non-Western/unorthodox dramaturgies. As a non-native English writer, their texts play with multilingualism and syntax. Influenced by Arabesk culture and late modernities, Kunak imagines new situations out of real encounters that point out the problematics of hetero-patriarchal structures. Orientalism, self-Orientalization (the perception of the 'Eastern', and how the Eastern sees themselves through this construction), as well as camouflage, self-censorship and science fiction are other interests of artist.

About Performa

Performa is a non-profit arts organization well-known for the Performa Biennial, a festival of performance art that happens every two years in various venues and institutions in New York City. Performa was founded in 2004 by art historian and curator RoseLee Goldberg. Since launching New York’s first performance biennial, Performa 05, in 2005, the organization has solidified its identity as a commissioning and producing entity. As a “museum without walls”, Performa contributes important art historical heft to the field by showing the development of live art in all its forms from many different cultural perspectives, reaching back to the Renaissance.