Installation, Performance

2024, Ignite Gallery, OCAD University, Toronto

Photograpy by lo bil

Sculpture as the remains of a performance. Where the body has been and what it has exchanged with the space it occupied. The soil and the plastic wrap keep the memory of the body after its departure, what does the body retain? My frame longs for every touch and imprint of the past. It carries every union, mélange, composite. It creates its own version in the image of itself.

The making propels me; the afterthought we see.

Materials: Plywood, nails, soil, plastic wrap, tape, fishing line.

With thanks to: lo bil, Derya İrdem.

Performance

LEGS II

2023, OCAD University Great Hall, Toronto

Photography by Henry Chan

Together with lo bil we initiated the second Toronto iteration of *LEGS.

I performed a simple action of emptying six bags of soil onto the floor and setting up a hand washing station in the corner of the hall. I then shaped three small mounds in a row, washing my hands clean in between each formation.

*LEGS is is an all-day performance art relay. Participating artists are suggested by other participating artists, snowballing a self-organizing event that is disinterested in traditional curation.

The form of the event is dictated by a chosen duration which is then divided equally by the number of performance artists from the local community who are invited to participate. On December 16, 2023 second Toronto iteration the audience witnessed a continuous performance work made up of seven-minute performances over the course of seven hours.

Founded on a belief in community trust, performative dialogue and artistic self-determinacy, the resulting collective event lets participating artists be responsible not only for the continuous stream of idea- and image-making, but also for the realization of event itself. There is no staff, no coordinator, no stage manager, only artists working together. LEGS is a manifestation of the social and performing body through the collective network and expanded community.

The first iteration of LEGS was presented in Montréal on February 7, 2015, at Le Cercle Carré. The score and format of the event was initially imagined by an informal collective of artists (including Christian Bujold, Michelle Lacombe, Marie-Claude Gendron, Nadège Grebmeier Forget, Katherine-Josée Gervais and Jean-Philippe Luckurst-Cartier) and was created with the intention of activating and making-visible the often fragmented local performance art community.

Performance

The Rhubarb Festival

2023, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto

Photography by Henry Chan

and Coman Poon

A re-creation of an excerpt from the film “Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” by Chantal Akerman. The actions of polishing shoes and making coffee are repeated in three different variations: in a video with the same choreography as the film, in a slide show of AI visuals generated by text prompts describing the actions, and performed live on stage.

Impromptu

Outdoor public performance, part of Performance Art USA

2022

Mccarren Park, Brooklyn, NYC

Photography by

Nima Nikakhlagh

Yolanda Duarte

Yell Freeman

An unplanned performance prompted by random objects gathered on the day of the event.

Responding to the site by shutting off the mind, following the impulses, being in the moment, taking in the surroundings and going into the next action.

Performance

2020, The Bentway, Toronto

Photography by

• Louise Liliefeldt

• Sueanne Mcgregor

• Coman Poon

On September 22, 2020 I participated in the world wide performances by artists working together in public spaces to mark the September Equinox as a celebration for Freedom and Democracy. The event in Toronto was organized by Coman Poon.

I began the performance by opening two new packages of yellow and red ropes and laying them on the ground. I started to manipulate them in slow and rhythmic motions. The pace of the manipulations increased gradually during the 20 minute performance where towards the end they became rapid and chaotic against the backdrop of the freeway and the surrounding condo buildings.

Performance

Pi*llOry

2020, Live broadcast from Collective Studio, Toronto

Photography by Tina Bararian

Language is a glue that binds human interaction. Human interaction then becomes all-encompassing verisimilitude. Let’s take away the glue, let’s take away the familiar reciprocity. Let’s go backwards. What truly speaks to gut also speaks to mind. The act is the hero, the words support the act.

My intent was to de-construct a solid piece of furniture. I, then attempted to re-construct it with no skill but a desire to create something new. Its purpose existed only in the moment. The moment is the only lasting structure.

Durational group performance by

Simlâ Civelek, Ayumi Goto, Soleil Launière

2019, OCAD University, Toronto

Curated by Ashok Mathur

Sponsored by OCADU graduate studies and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

Photography by Yuula Benivolski

Durational Performance Notes, Written by Keiko Hart

To look is a physical act; to bear witness to a performance is to be active in it. A witness to a performance is a participant; performer and witness act together. But can they feel together? The personal narratives we share through the language of feeling invites empathy. Practicing empathy suggests we can feel the emotions derived from the lived experiences of another through understanding. How do we reach this understanding⁠—how do we feel together?

When I enter the space at 49 McCaul, I immediately feel as though I’m witnessing something intimate. Glass bottles with long narrow necks and spherical bases lean against the wall for Simlâ Civelek to pluck and gently pour milk into. Their bulbous basins fill with opaque white. Civelek doesn’t return them to the wall, but moves to balance them upright on the tiled floor without the support to stand, confronting their circular nature. Each tips and spills its contents almost instantly save for a few ephemeral moments that still time. It is in these focused instances that I feel most tense, while the fall is a flooding release.

Adjacent to Civelek is the Blackbox, a windowless space where I find an arrangement of objects that reads more ceremonially. A pair of baby shoes made of animal hide are placed between a triangular arrangement of porcupine quills. A cheesecloth is stretched out like a placemat for three pieces of ossified driftwood. Soleil Launière tells me they are the bones of the ocean. They are bordered by three metallic bowls filled with water that Launière shifts between: dipping her hands; swinging her arms to leave trails of fluid along the ground; dripping liquid along the edges of the cloth; bringing it to her head and letting it soak into her hair, face, body.

Dried tobacco is sprinkled in barely noticeable traces throughout 49 McCaul. It hints to hidden histories that came before institutional structures. Ayumi Goto begins by scatterring the cured leaves along the building perimeter, then moves into the entrances and hallways. She motions for me to open my hands and places a pinch of it into my palms. More witnesses come and go: arts students who draw interpretive portraits of the scene laid out to them by the performers, visual records of what has taken place. Eventually the three performers and audience migrate to the Blackbox, coming together in close quarters as Goto mirrors the movements of Civelek and Launière, (re)inhabiting and (re)experiencing, motioning as if to handle invisible energies—unifying mortal and spiritual.

Performance

Experimental Action International Performance Art Festival

2019, Secret Group, Houston, TX

Photography by Kylie Sivley (Holy Moment Photography) and Meng Ying Li

Durational performance

Experimental Action International Performance Art Festival

2019, Secret Group, Houston, TX

Photography by Kylie Sivley (Holy Moment Photography) and video stills by Andrea Albright

Performance

CIRCA art actuel

2015, Montreal, QC

Photography by Sara Létourneau

Performance

Art Nomade International Performance Art Festival

2015, La Pulperie, Chicoutimi, QC 

Photography by Valérie Lavoie and Art Nomade

http://zoneoccupee.com/de-linteret-quil-y-a-a-live-life-to-the-fullest-tel-que-le-conseille-le-pot-de-shampooing/

Performance 

Process, Artscape Youngplace

2015, Toronto

Photography by Lo Bil

I started by projecting an image of what is outside of the window onto the wall behind me. It was getting dark at this point. I poured milk from a regular glass bottle into another glass bottle that had a round bottom. I balanced the round bottom bottle on the floor, it would stay suspended for a split second then fall over spilling the milk. I did this action several times until i ended up with a pattern of spilled milk on the floor.

I then played one of my videos in which i “give an interview”, talking about nothing. While this video was playing i would attempt to talk about nothing in real time, sometimes talking in between the pauses and sometimes overlapping the speech in the video. The performance finished when the video ended.

You can view the video here:

https://vimeo.com/128737512

Performance

7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art

2014, Toronto

Photography by Henry Chan

Simlâ Civelek’s Gestural Imaginary, Written By Alison Cooley

Simlâ Civelek enters her performance in a beige shift dress and metallic heals: apparel difficult not to read as yuppie businesswear or the garb of a disaffected housewife. (I’m conscious of this hyper-gendered description. Men’s suits signify across various social and economic lines, and I held back comment on John Court’s black activewear and cargopants earlier today. The ambiguity of character afforded by men’s clothing has no equivalence in women’s fashion. The performer’s dress and appearance don’t escape being read despite their apparent neutrality.) Her face, which is powdered in a tone mismatched to her skin, takes on a mask-like quality indicative of some level of… Nostalgia? Unbalance?

She begins with a reflective black plate sitting on the floor. Briefly examining its shape and catching her reflection, Civelek proceeds to hurl it against the wall. It clanks metallically, provokes an equivalence with the performer’s iridescent black heels. Upon second attempt, the plate shatters, flinging glass across the floor.

Civelek climbs a ladder (her heels teeter anxiously on the edges of the rungs) to its summit. She peels a blank piece of paper from the wall’s uppermost edge (a prop I handn’t noticed until this moment.) Appearing to read the page, she then slowly crumples it, compressing the sheet into as dense a fistful as she is able, over several gestures of flexing and opening the hand. She then deposits the crumpled mass into a vase of water on the floor. Listlessly, she stirs and splashes it, until the page has become a set of pulpy wet chunks at the bottom of the vessel.

Returning up the ladder, Civelek removes a package of cheesecloth affixed to the wall, unwraps it, and slowly begins to unfold the length of cloth. She turns it over and over in her hands, running the length up and down through her hands in short, circular tosses. I have seen my grandmother, whose arthritic hands are riddled with the stamps of her own particular anxieties (of hosting, home-making, being taken seriously and treated with dignity, being remembered, being safe as her body shudders) perform this same action: straightening and folding over, only to straighten and refold the same piece of cloth in a kind of soothing and familiar repetition.

Civelek veils herself with the cheesecloth, conjuring some figure between bride and ghost. She sits, gestures with her hands, rests them upon her thighs, and then turns them over again. Eventually, removing the veil, she returns to the gesture of straightening the cloth, letting it unfold from the top through the length of the ladder, evening its edges, and then continuing the loop to the other end. Her short, rhythmic tosses to unfurl the cheesecloth— familiar gestures of inconsequential meaning— become moments of curiosity and pause. At the cheesecloth’s peak through her hands, Civelek untimes her short tossing action, and the cloth drops. Her hands remain in mid-air, the moment suspended.

I have been struggling to synthesize Civelek’s disparate and narrative-resisting series of acts. But something Anya Liftig said in today’s panel struck me as particularly applicable to Civelek’s performance: that performance is an attempt to manifest an interior world in real space. That it materializes imagination, makes public the difficult, the compelling, the strange moments of aloneness. Civelek’s gestures have in them the quiet contemplation of simultaneous solitude and sharedness.

Performance 

Intergalactic Studio, Artscape Youngplace

2014, Toronto

Video Stills by Augusto Monk

In this performance piece, I presented a series of actions. Audience members randomly chose some numbers from a deck of playing cards which produced a phone number. I, then called this number to have a conversation with the person on the other end.

Another action involved a wooden structure I’d built. I began the action by placing a lit candle underneath a twine that held two eggs (filled with milk) on opposite sides. I manipulated a cheesecloth for the entire duration it took for the candle to burn off the twine letting the eggs fall and break.

Performance

FADO Performance Art Centre, Theatre Centre Pop Up

FADO

Solo performance works by Alice De Visscher and Simla Civelek

2013, Toronto

Photography by Henry Chan

Durational performance

Studio residency

Artscape Gibraltar Point Centre of The Arts

2011, Toronto

Photography by Ramon Serrano

A performance that lasted from sunrise to sunset. During daylight I sat alongside a sheep’s head that was stripped of its skin. As the smell of decaying flesh filled the room, I sat motionless as if posing for an art class. The audience members were invited into the studio to participate in the process of waiting.

One-on-one performance

7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, 2008, Toronto

Nuit Blanche, part of SAVAC, Ghost Stories, 2009, Toronto

CICAC, Thompson Rivers University, 2010, Kamloops, BC

Photography by

• Henrik Lofgren

• Maya Ersan

I built a wooden structure of 4 feet by 4 feet and covered it with black fabric. There was a slot at the eye level. For this durational performance i was in the box for 10 to 12 hours. An outside placard informed audience members that I “was a Muslim woman, it was my choice to enter the box and that they were invited to come into the box and get to know me.”

One person at a time was allowed to come into the box where I was naked. I had cards with different options on them and the audience member was encouraged to choose one of the actions listed on the cards. The actions were: 1- We can have a conversation in French. 2- We can read a scene in English. 3- We can pray in Arabic. 4- I can recite a poem in Turkish. 5- You can slap me. After the interaction, the audience member would push the card through the slot, making it fall onto the ground, and exit the box.

From 7a*11d blog, Written by Elaine Wong

The third day of the festival was characterized by performances that transformed a range of spaces.

Simla Civelek created within the back space of the Free Gallery a tiny world unto herself -- a small wooden box draped in black cloth. Civelek prefaced her performance with a placard stating "I am a Muslim woman. It is my choice to enter the black box. You are welcome to come in and know me."

One of the box's walls bears a small slit at eye-level, an image that immediately conjures up the metaphor of a burqa, but also reminds me of the mail slot on a door, an observation made more potent as pieces of paper are slipped through the slot and flutter to the floor in small, persistent attempts to communicate to the outside world.

Issues (and perhaps the fallacy) of choice are highlighted. Onto the walls of the box are projected a poem that highlights Civelek's lack of choice -- "language has left me" and "long gone are the days i picked every sound word voice." Yet those who enter the box are given a Test, asked to choose from multiple interactions in different languages that will structure the action to happen. Who then is in control?
A little bit of guilt filled me as I circled my choice -- I am one of the people who are limiting her, choosing for her "what emotion, what idea, what address" she should use. She recited for me her poem in Turkish, eyes closed, mouth shaping the words, but clearly uneasy.

Civelek shared with me an interesting piece of information: at first the box was a familiar thing to her. It was her box, her life. But after the six hours spent inside its warm confines, it became somewhat alien, oppressive -- she could not think, she could not react. By the time I had entered her box, she was no longer in control. She told me that entering the box was her choice, but what happens afterwards, once she lets people in, is a third entity that exists outside both the bodies within the box. That which she controlled in turn begins to controls her.  

And yet, in contrast all this, was the interaction of a small child who knew Civelek (her Auntie) was in the box. The box was irrelevant, the concealing cloth was a simple barrier, the social and cultural implications were meaningless; the identity of the woman inside the box was immutable to the child. Upon waving goodbye, the child's mother murmured "look, Auntie is smiling with her eyes" -- the only parts of Civelek that could be seen from outside the box. That statement alone is more poignant that anything I could write.

Performance

OPEN International Performance Art Festival

2009, Beijing, China

Photography, courtesy of OPEN Art

I acknowledge the support of the

Canada Council for the Arts

One-on-one performance

AlleyJaunt, 2007, Toronto

Electric Eclectics festival, 2008, Meaford

Now Magazine, by Sheila Gnostic

https://nowtoronto.com/news/alleyjaunt-joyride/

In a Volkswagen camper van I find the Poetry Caravanserai. If the red curtain is tied back, one or two may enter the lovely lair created by Simla Civelek, who is reclining on pillows dressed in a spangly belly dancing costume. 

She offers a scrolled menu from which one can choose up to three poems, from "amuse-bouches" through entrees and dessert. I select an entree of Eyes Of Ashes Woman and a dessert that asks What Happened To My Patience? Civelek doesn't read, but recites her poems by heart. The first is the tale of her relationship to another woman of course I mean The Other Woman. After, I accept a piece of Turkish delight from a silvery salver.

Children's Choice Awards, by Darren O'Donnell

The over-all winner surprised me. They chose Simla Civelek, a friend of mine, who had set herself up as a sort of itinerant gypsy poet in the back of a small camper van. She lay there looking like a belly dancer on rich colored blankets and offered the kids a menu with different poems. She began the performance by washing the children’s hands – something I remember the long-haul bus drivers doing when I visited Turkey. Then to finish she gave them a piece of Turkish Delight – the real stuff. The kids loved it, especially the poem about abortion.

Participatory installation, Durational performance

Nuit Blanche

2007, Stanley park, Toronto

Photography by Carrie Musgrave, Zach Slootsky

Read a participant's review here:

http://glacia.typepad.com/blog/2007/10/glacias-meditations.html