Aslı Çavuşoğlu, 1982

Born in Istanbul in 1982, Aslı Çavuşoğlu graduated from the Cinema and Television Department of Marmara University in 2004. In her research-based practice, she explores historiography, cultural circulation, and the processes through which knowledge is produced. Working across various media, including painting, installation, video, and publishing, Çavuşoğlu investigates how knowledge and images circulate and transform over time through archives, oral narratives, and material culture. Her works question how historical narratives are constructed and how they are continually reinterpreted.

Çavuşoğlu’s video “Stendhal Syndrome” documents a performance realized as part of the exhibition “Centre of Gravity” held at Istanbul Modern in 2005. The single-channel, five-second, silent video takes its title from the so-called “Stendhal Syndrome,” first mentioned in Stendhal’s 1817 travel book Rome, Naples and Florence. This psychological condition describes physical reactions such as dizziness, palpitations, or hallucinations that may occur following an intense encounter with art.

In the video, this reaction is represented through the figure of a woman collapsing to the ground after experiencing the works of Santiago Sierra. One of the early examples in which Çavuşoğlu engages with historiography and mechanisms of attribution of value, this brief video questions the meanings assigned both to historical figures and to artists. At the same time, through Istanbul Modern, it reveals the role museums play in these processes of valuation, opening the authority of art institutions to critical reflection.