Göksu Kunak: Bodies Beyond Simulation
Speculative or science fiction
can be a tool in shapeshifting
and protecting yourself. How
can I still be precise about
what I want to say, but
keep myself out of danger?
Göksu Kunak
Göksu Kunak, AJAIB MAHLUQAT (ACAYIP MAHLUKAT), 2023. Photo: Spyros Rennt and Performa Biennial
In the live work of Göksu Kunak (they/them), performers slowly walk on walls or crawl across ceilings while making seductive and humourous faces, slide quickly yet elegantly down dancing-poles with their skin audibly scrubbing the metal, passionately hug one another after pointing imaginary guns, or jump onto a car – first to make out with it, then to smash it. Often dressed entirely in black – a style best described as contemporary glam-grunge – their bodies range from lean to muscular, their attitudes self-confident and fierce. Who are these presences – larger than life, radiant in their excess – who defy gravity, shimmer with surplus beauty, and slip from one potent form to another?
With a multifaceted body of work, Kunak unravels dynamics of visibility and invisibility, the individual and the political, self-determination and empowerment, surveillance and control. Drawing on their academic background for theoretical frameworks and art-historical references, Kunak often takes inspiration from pop culture with critical wit. Using text, movement, sound, (moving) image, found objects and footage, the artist creates ‘hypercollages’ – a term coined themself – in the form of performances and installations. These not only move effortlessly between the visual and performing arts but also connect the two fields seamlessly. At times, works originally conceived for an exhibition space are later developed for a black box setting, and vice versa. This artistic methodology is not only a matter of form, but also a tactical tool: a chameleon-like strategy for navigating the mechanics of concealment and revelation – or, more precisely, for adapting to conditions and circumstances.
In 2023, Kunak presented a new body of work titled Dhikr consisting of videos and installations. It emerged from their broader research into notions of camouflage and self-censorship, and shifting interpretations of Acâibü’l-mahlûkät. This thirteenth-century Persian/Ottoman book of cosmology, geography and science includes mythological and made-up characters to explain the world. Kunak’s research, the book – republished in Turkey with a foreword by the current president (Acayip Mahlukat in Turkish) – describes humans, djinn, fantastical sky beings, precious stones, mountains, oceans, plants, and trees. The images depict hybrid creatures: elephant-humans with wings and cow-reptiles among others. In short, it is a story of a highly fictional fantasy world full of hybridisation and idiosyncrasy.
With Dhikr, Kunak explores the potential of these mythological creatures to move beyond entrenched understandings of camouflage as a figure-ground relationship. Instead, the artist probes the Islamic notion of Taqiyya, as discussed by Reza Negarestani in the 2008 dystopian theory-fiction book Cyclonopedia.1 To do so, Kunak speculates on possible forms of hyper-camouflage.
In the video The Niche (2022), transcendence leads to transformation. Slow and repetitive movements make Kunak appear both animalistic and cyborgian, which is amplified by outfits consisting of barely anything to an almost tent-like dress. Kunak changes forms to become a pop star, a porn star, a consultant, a jihadist, a corrupt politician, a US war machine, a femme dom and so on. The outer layer becomes a shell, a place of refuge – practical for when nomadic navigating through alien (or not-so-alien– surroundings. Here, the notion of Taqiyya becomes most visible: merging with various characters, gender as camouflage, hiding in a niche for shelter, and ultimately becoming one with the environment. All of this is presented as a mode of survival in the face of threat and fear. However, such veiling processes do not mean complete invisibility. In the vein of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s artistic methodology, invisibility does not equal absence and vice versa, as long as one can identify the codes.
As such, the artist creates a critical parallel to the non-gendered ‘Young-Girl’ archetype as theorised by the anonymous French-Italian post-Marxist philosophical journal Tiqqun. Around the turn of the millennium, the Tiqqan collective delved into the intricate dynamics of visibility and censorship within capitalist societies. The text posits that modern power structures prefer subtle mechanisms of control over overt repression. This approach results in a form of censorship that is both pervasive and invisible, shaping individuals’ desires and behaviours to align with capitalist norms. While individuals, especially those embodying the ‘Young-Girl’ archetype, are hyper-visible in media and consumer culture, this visibility is a form of control to feed into the desire of wanting to be that very archetype rather than empowerment. 2 The spectacle of constant exposure as a ‘Young- Girl’ serves to enforce conformity, suppresses genuine expressions of individuality, and upholds an idealised archetype that doesn’t truly exist.
Moments that crack surfaces of conformity are the subject of Kunak’s exhibition ‘Geçmiş Masumiyet / Bygone Innocence’ (2024) – a body of work informed by the 1996 Susurluk car accident.3 This fatal crash and the ensuing scandal had a lasting impact on politics and society in Turkey. It revealed the existence of a network in the triangle of crime, politics, and state, which, prior to the accident, had only been speculated about. In the exhibition and the related black-box performance, INNOCENCE (2024), Kunak contemplates the politics of concealing and erasing. The focus is on the car crash as a phenomenon: a moment when technology reveals its worst effects, and thus a moment when the falsities, or truths, of our constructed reality are laid bare.
With prints, sculptures, installations, a pole dancer and a climber, the artist approaches the notion of the crash as simulacrum – as theorised by Jean Baudrillard – examining what happens when it comes under pressure. The work focuses on bodybuilding and the body-machine relationship. This varied body of work is adapted according to the spaces and contexts in which the exhibition and performance take place. Key pieces include the 2024 photo collages Nasıl Oldu? / How Did it Happen?, Crash, and Sorgulama / The Interrogation. These are shown on ensembles of flat screen TVs displaying still found images of car wrecks, office spaces, interrogation rooms, and a politician sitting in an office. Most images appear to be from the 1990s, some digitally scratched or altered. Some screens show visible Finder menus or glimpses of a desktop, adding a deliberate layer of messiness. This aesthetic undermines the assumption that sleekness equates to professionalism – critiquing the constructed authoritarian façade of state institutions, their actors and performances of power and surveillance. Kunak exudes a quiet confidence, fully aware of how the game is played – unwilling to be deceived by first impressions, yet committed to revealing what lies beneath.
In the performances of Geçmiş Masumiyet / Bygone Innocence, the climber, pole dancer, muscular performers, and Kunak themself move seamlessly through exaggerated gestures, borrowing from soap operas and Hollywood films to evoke dramatised hyperrealities. Brief moments of stillness turn performers into dynamic sculptures, while the dancer’s pole and climber’s gear become kinetic ones. Using floors, walls and ceilings, the performers induce a matrix-like atmosphere, opening heightened dimensions and shifting temporalities. The upward and downward motions emphasise both circularity and verticality, extending the horizon physically and metaphorically. Here, Kunak explores the ‘shell’ that humankind tends to create by making an (online) image of oneself, by building strength of the body itself and by extending its power beyond its natural capacities through substances, machines and digital technology. Following this line of thinking, the dramatised image, the trained muscle and the machine form an exaggerated, hyperreal extension of the self – as if existing in an augmented dimension within the same space.
The DU, Maschine (2024) image series continues this exploration, referencing Baudrillard’s simulacra and the pressures required to maintain a certain image – like contracted muscles. The close-ups of a female bodybuilder’s poses also suggest moments where the illusion falters: muscles twitch or such images are distorted, a glitch revealing the hyperreal falsity of a simulacrum. With Bygone Innocence, Kunak tests the temporalities of suspense of disbelief, dread and shock, exploring the notion of the crash as a way to glimpse deeper truths – and by extension, exposing the concealed mechanisms that produce archetypes like the ‘Young-Girl’, among others.
While Dhikr is about shapeshifting into new characters and transmutating into various forms in order to probe tactics for dealing with social or political threats, Bygone Innocence focuses on the seams, cracks and glitches that reveal the systems behind the threats. Kunak’s critical works address Western and Southwest Asian politics; political and personal agency in relation to (in)visibility, (un)veiling, and erasure; Taqiyya and Islam; time and decay. Through hypervisibility – perhaps even by adopting the mask of the ‘Young-Girl’– Kunak proposes ways to adapt and transform temporarily, while remaining connected to the self. These are forms of personal-political resilience. With this clever approach, Kunak turns the augmented reality of simulacra to their advantage, moving in the spirit of Ronald D. Laing’s poem:
They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me.
I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.4
Göksu Kunak is an artist, researcher, and writer from Ankara, based in Berlin. Their interest lies in chronopolitics and hybrid texts/scores/situations that deal with the performative lingo(s) of contemporary lifestyles as well as non-Western/unorthodox dramaturgies.
Léon Kruijswijk is Performance Curator at Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand- Duc Jean. Prior to this position, he was Curator at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin ,and has worked as a freelance curator and writer. He lives and works in Berlin and Luxembourg. Rooted in the visual arts, his curatorial practice spans performance, dance, experimental music, literature, and film, as he navigates themes at the intersection of queer and gender theory, art and politics, and institutional critique. His written reflections on art can be found in various artist books, magazines, and online platforms.
1 Taqiyyah, in Islam, the practice of concealing one’s belief and foregoing ordinary religious duties when under threat of death or injury
2 Tiqqun, Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl (MIT Press, 1999): 23–27.
3 The 1996 Susurluk car accident in Turkey involved a senior police official, a Kurdish MP, and a wanted criminal and ultranationalist, revealing what became known as the ‘deep state’. The scandal led to mass protests and a parliamentary investigation, though few were held accountable.
4 R. D. Laing, Knots (Routledge, 1970): 1.
