Private Project

ONE: Chelsworth, 2022

Two channel video installation, 14’17’’ loop, color, sound

ONE: Chelsworth, 2022 is a two screen video installation which takes its starting point from a wall painting from Çatalhöyük, an ancient civilization from 7 500 BC - 5 700 BC central Anatolia (today’s Turkey).

The ancient painting is thought to be made by female shamans as part of a ritual connecting the human body with the body of the earth, and the living with the dead. This project intends to trigger that long lost memory which we still posses in our bodies. Two female performers -one from Spain and the other from Poland- are invited to create rituals in nature on a sunny summer’s day in a green field in Chelsworth, Suffolk UK, in response to this ancient painting and the stories it evokes. While one chooses to perform a ritual of fertility by the river side creating an ancient symbol of fertility with mud carried from the river bed; the other takes the dead branches of a living tree as the place of her ritual. While bodies merge with the earth’s body, limbs, lungs, wombs, mud, air, water and earth coalesce. The two performances complete and mirror each other in a continuous loop of birth and death and rebirth cycles.

The work reclaims oneness -with the earth, with our bodies and with each other- and one’s embeddedness in the grand web of life in light of ancient wisdom. It sets out to explore the relevance of this wisdom for us today in a global context. It is the second edition of an ongoing series of explorations on the topic.

  • Nazli Gurlek Hodder
    Director
  • Nazli Gurlek Hodder
    Writer
  • Nazli Gurlek Hodder
    Producer
  • Karolina Nieduza
    Key Cast
  • Ana Barretxeguren
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    14 minutes 17 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 1, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    15,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Turkey
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Nazli Gurlek Hodder

Born in 1981, Istanbul, Turkey
Lives and works in Istanbul

Selected Solo Show
2020 "In The Body", Evliyagil Dolapdere, Istanbul

Selected Group Exhibitions
2022 "Bodfa Continuum", curated by Julie Upmeyer, Plas Bodfa, Anglesey, Wales, UK
2022 "Elsewhere", curated by Begüm Güney, Decollage Art Space, Istanbul
2020 “Crystal Chateau”, curated by Can Akgümüş, Evliyagil Museum, Ankara
2019 "Gaia Has 1000 Names", curated by Tara Londi, Elgiz Museum, Istanbul
2019 "Happening Now", curated by Özge İnal, Artnivo, Akaretler Art Weeks, Istanbul
2018 6th International Çanakkale Biennial: “Before the Past, After the Future”, curated by CABININ, Çanakkale, Turkey
2017 “Floating Tactics After a Sunken Island”, curated by Sibel Horada, Daire Gallery, Istanbul

Performance
2019 "Phenomenal Hole", curated by Özge İnal, Artnivo at Akaretler Art Week, Istanbul
2017 “ONE”, curated by Simge Burhanoğlu, Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilisations (RCAC), co-produced by RCAC and Performistanbul, a parallel event to the 15th Istanbul Biennial in the context of "The Curious Case of Çatalhöyük" exhibition at RCAC

Selected International Press
Matt Hanson, "On next-wave feminism: An installation by Nazlı Gürlek Hodder", Daily Sabah, December 28, 2020
Hatice Utkan Özden, "Exploring art as healer and alchemy", Hürriyet Daily News, December 24, 2020
Gesualdo Busacca, “Being ONE with the Past”, Art Unlimited, December 2017
İrem Yasar, “Ancient wall painting inspires modern performance artist”, Daily Sabah, September 08, 2017
Kaya Genç, “Adventurous exhibition explores 'Floating Tactics After a Sunken Island'”, Daily Sabah, November 03, 2017
Syskia Lissens, “Edging Toward Arabia: Istanbul Hosts Jameel Prize 4”, Harpers Bazaar Art, June 2016

Education
2008 MFA Curating, Goldsmiths College, London
2006 BA Painting, The Academy of Fine Arts of Florence

Education and Workshops in Expressive Arts Therapies
2020 The Singing Body, with Dohee Lee, Tamalpa Institute, San Rafael, California
2019 Life/Art Process® with Daria Halprin, Tamalpa Institute, San Rafael, California
2018 “Bring Your Imagination to Life: An Introduction to Scoring & Performance" with Joy Cosculluela, Tamalpa Institute, San Rafael, California
2018 Skinner Releasing Technique Level 1 Training, Mimar Sinan Unviersity of Fine Arts Contemporary Dance Department, Istanbul
2017 Introduction to Dance Therapy Master, Codarts, Rotterdam

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

I am invested in developing an embodied aesthetic that reflects the here and now of authentic life experiences in order to speak of freedoms, agency, resistance and empowerment. Through the artistic gestures of healing and resistance, I propose a return to a desiring, performing, creating body, that is in constant continuation and flow with the rest of life.

My works reveal performative acts of the body in various ritualistic situations carried out in nature or in the solitude of my studio with the intention of developing practices of freedom, agency, resilience and empowerment. My questions concern eco-feminism, oneness of the earth's body and the human body, and art as a tool for healing and resistance.

Through instinctively structured rituals I explore material, emotional and spiritual dimensions of the body together with themes such as birth, death, creation, alchemy, mythology, ecology, healing, resilience and the unconscious. I combine elements from Anatolian and Central Asian shamanic cultures with dance therapy techniques and archaic symbolisms. The resulting works bear witness to the potential of the body as an inconsistent and vulnerable artifact, with leaky boundaries in constant continuation and flow with the rest of life surrounding it.

My mediums include painting, performance art, installation art and video art.