LEKE & UYKU
Leke
2021
HD video.
3 min. 26 sec.
Uyku
2021
HD video.
2min. 21 sec.
2021
HD video.
3 min. 26 sec.
Uyku
2021
HD video.
2min. 21 sec.
“Intrinsic to the films produced by Ela Kazdal is the analysis of kinship and of familial relations. Two of the most recent video works, Leke and Uyku (both 2021) were produced in collaboration with her mother in Istanbul. Their relationship subtly emerges from this two-part work, without being explicitly at the centre. In Leke (which means Stain), Ela prompted her mother to remove the seeds of a pomegranate; she then responded to her mother’s performance with her own. In a similar way, Uyku (Sleep) results from asking her mother about her re-occurring nightmare – drowning in the sea. Both films are constructed upon an imbalanced dialogue, in which the prompts only act as pretexts for Ela’s private fathoming of both ‘the frustrations and the love’ that characterise her mother-daughter relationship. In fact, the evaluation of this relationship is never openly revealed, but remains in the background of the work, weaved among reminiscences and past experiences from the artist’s life.
Through filmmaking, Ela renegotiates the meaning of kinship and tests its limits according to the viewer’s encounter with her works. Acting within a confined and seemingly-broken structure, Ela expands the possibilities of the relationship with family members by engaging them in a covert creative collaboration. The moments of sociability and exchange that she produces provide the underlying pattern of her films, which is then enmeshed with additional, more candid and maybe less triggering personal anecdotes. In a more or less conscious way, Ela takes the forms from the existing social bonds that she is a part of, and cautiously re-stitches the relational fabric in her own immediate experience. In the same way, she helps the audience find the tools to welcome and embrace difference through dialogue, collaboration and creativity.”
Text by Jael Arazi.
Through filmmaking, Ela renegotiates the meaning of kinship and tests its limits according to the viewer’s encounter with her works. Acting within a confined and seemingly-broken structure, Ela expands the possibilities of the relationship with family members by engaging them in a covert creative collaboration. The moments of sociability and exchange that she produces provide the underlying pattern of her films, which is then enmeshed with additional, more candid and maybe less triggering personal anecdotes. In a more or less conscious way, Ela takes the forms from the existing social bonds that she is a part of, and cautiously re-stitches the relational fabric in her own immediate experience. In the same way, she helps the audience find the tools to welcome and embrace difference through dialogue, collaboration and creativity.”
Text by Jael Arazi.