Nezaket Ekici: PANTA RHEI

Bröhan-Museum 6 November 2021 

Nezaket Ekici’s new Performance “Panta Rhei”  in Bröhan-Museum, Berlin on 6th November, 2021. The installation with performance video documentation will stay till end January, 2022.

Nezaket Ekici(b. 1970, Kirsehir, Turkey) is considered one of the most important performance artists in Germany. On the occasion of the 100th birthday of the collection's founder Karl H. Bröhan, she deals with the museum's porcelain collection in a specially developed work.

In a white room there are white pedestals, on the floor there are countless objects made of porcelain and buckets of different colours. Ekici picks up individual objects and dips them each in one of the colours. She then piles the objects up on the plinths, sorted according to their new colour order. The previously white room becomes colourful, not only because objects have been dipped in paint, but also because paint drips onto the floor, the plinths and onto Ekici's dress. The more porcelain she piles on top of each other, the higher the resulting abstract, coloured porcelain sculptures become, while the piles of porcelain on the floor empty out.

With her work, Ekici raises questions about the practice of collecting and the development of collections. How do collections develop? What categorisations are made and invented for objects? What is the work and pain behind collecting and letting go?