Mehtap Baydu, 1972

Born in Bingöl, Mehtap Baydu began her studies at the Department of Sculpture at Erciyes University Faculty of Fine Arts in 1996–1997 and continued her education at the Department of Sculpture at Hacettepe University Faculty of Fine Arts from 1997 to 2000. Based in Berlin, the artist works across a range of media, including performance, sculpture, and installation. Body, identity, and gender lie at the center of Baydu’s practice. Rather than treating the body as a represented image, she approaches it as both a material and a field of expression that participates directly in the production of the work. In her works, she explores the social and cultural meanings attributed to the body, transforming familiar forms to focus on how the body is perceived, classified, and made visible.

The artist’s installation “The Rose Garden” consists of white porcelain flowers blooming on brass branches. At first glance, the work evokes an elegant garden, but on closer inspection it reveals bodily details. The flowers are formed by fragmenting and abstractly reconfiguring molds taken from different parts of the artist’s body, including her elbows, breasts, shoulders, and armpits. Pores and fine hairs transferred from the molds onto the porcelain surface make the flowers’ bodily origins visible. Through the relationship she establishes between flowers and the body, Baydu brings together notions of beauty, corporeality, and intimacy, transforming forms that initially appear familiar and appealing into a viewing experience that opens onto different associations as one moves closer.