Photography by Valérie Lavoie and Art Nomade

BIO:

Simla Civelek (b. Istanbul, Turkey) is a performance artist based in Toronto, Canada. Her work has been presented at the FADO Performance Art Centre, 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, SAVAC, and Nuit Blanche in Toronto, Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, Circa in Montréal, Art Nomade in Chicoutimi, Regart in Lévis, Glasshouse Art Life Lab in Brooklyn/NY, U.S.A., Experimental Action Performance Art Festival in Houston/TX, U.S.A., and OPEN Performance Art Festival in Beijing, China among other venues.

STATEMENT:

We all carry the record and knowledge of past gestures in our bodies. I bring these gestures into performances removed from specific connotations in order to review our quotidian experiences.

My performance work develops out of spatial awareness of various elements: the location, the objects, my body and the audience. These elements produce different relationships each time they interact. 

How I experience time is a very big part of my life and work. For me, slow doesn’t mean nothing is happening nor that it has to be boring. If one has the hunger to catch every moment then one can watch plants grow. I want an audience to witness an action that traditionally might not be called an action. These “microscopic moments” unfold at a very slow pace to emphasize subtle shifts in motion. These shifts are vital in their transformative potential.

My body becomes an object affecting and being affected at the same time without any psychological backstory. A fear of being incomprehensible motivates me to consider what is communicated by not communicating. I use my body as a teleprompter to translate “nothing” into something for the witness.