Mehtap Baydu: Loving You Is So Hard!

Mehtap Baydu’s Seni Sevmek Çok Zor (Loving You Is So Hard!) brings together performance, sculpture, photography and video in the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition in Turkey. On view at Arter, the exhibition explores the relationship between the human body and objects, while reflecting on identity, memory, transformation and belonging.

Bringing together newly produced works with pieces from Baydu’s recent practice, the exhibition creates an immersive space where the boundaries between body, object and performance become fluid. Her works draw on personal memories and everyday experiences while questioning fixed ideas of identity and the ways bodies can change, adapt and take on different forms.

One of the exhibition’s highlights is a new adaptation of Nefes (Atem), a performance Baydu originally presented in Berlin in 2019. Reimagined for Arter’s gallery space, the work explores the physical limits of the body and makes invisible forms of labour and effort tangible.

Curated by Selen Ansen, Seni Sevmek Çok Zor offers an intriguing introduction to Baydu’s multidisciplinary practice and contemporary art in Istanbul, particularly for visitors interested in experimental approaches to the body, identity and materiality.