The group exhibition My Body Breathes as the World Fades, is on view at Galeri Nev İstanbul between 17 April and 6 June, brings together works by Francesco Albano, Sevinç Altan, Özlem Altın, Başak Bugay, Burcu Erden, Gül Ilgaz, Mehmet İçöz, Elif Özen, Civan Özkanoğlu, Damla Sari, Aras Seddigh, Yaşam Şaşmazer, and Ali Şentürk, curated by Gizem Gedik. The exhibition unfolds in an atmosphere where time slows, movement is interrupted, and orientation and decision- making become uncertain, while its figural density draws viewers into a state of physical and affective proximity.
The tensions, unease, and anxieties of the present times accumulate in the mind, gradually inscribing themselves onto the body. As uncertainty thickens and the sense of control erodes, a shared field of individual and collective exhaustion deepens. In the exhibition, which traces the imprints of this fatigue on both consciousness and the body, a space of encounter opens between the visual worlds and diverse techniques of artists, most of whom have long been engaged with the body as a central focus of their practice.
In recent years, terms from psychology and neuroscience such as burnout, anxiety, freeze response, apathy, dissociation, depersonalization, anhedonia, brain fog, and somatization have increasingly entered everyday language. Yet the conditions addressed in the exhibition do not point to specific diagnoses, but rather reflect a shared experiential field shaped by the pressures and anxieties of the present. At times when the world seems to withdraw, when colours fade and sound recedes, the mind distances itself as a form of protection while the body remains; waiting, bearing, enduring, folding, diminishing, yet continuing to breathe. Headless figures, fragmented bodies, and suspended gestures evoke a dislocated, unstable state of being, turning this sense of rupture into a recurring rhythm throughout the exhibition.
Throughout the show, the prominent imagery of hands and feet emerges as extremities that carry both mental and physical burden, while also holding the potential for movement, support, and renewed contact. Weight concentrates at these endpoints; as if all pressure gathers there, yet the possibility of grounding and pushing up from below also appears in the same place. Drawings and spatial configurations open onto moments of separation, where the mind drifts away from the body. Space turns into a directionless, silent, and indeterminate inner world. As the mind withdraws from the weight of reality, it creates pockets of emptiness; time dissolves, continuity is suspended, and the sense of presence in the moment gives way to a more childlike impulse of reverie.
My Body Breathes as the World Fades is less about defining a condition than about sharing an affect. It traces the weight accumulated in the body and mind, the withdrawal of consciousness, and the fragile threshold where movement is postponed, together with the viewer.
*With thanks to ArtSümer, Bosfor, Gallery KAIROS, Öktem Aykut, SZ Art Services, The Pill, and Zilberman Gallery.