Nezaket Ekici has been working on the ongoing project “Daydream” since 2008. She has already been to 9 striking locations in 9 cities, on the beach of the Baltic Sea, at the Nigeria Falls in Toronto, at the Maiden Tower in Istanbul, at the Great Wall of China in Beijing, at the Acropolis in Athens, in villages in Ghana, on rooftops in Sao Paulo, on Elephanta Island in Mumbai and most recently at the Coloseum in Rome in 2016. She has created photo editions, video performances and live performances on location. She always travels through the various cities with the same white bench and the same salmon-colored dress and stages herself in front of the camera.
During the live performance, Ekici sits on the white bench and looks at her own video image, which she had previously recorded, framed in a gold frame like a mirror.
As if doubling and mirroring the reality of the film, the artist sits on the bench in front of the monitor, wearing the same dress and hairstyle and moving in harmony with the film. The endless variations of the same thing in different places, in the film as in reality, emphasize the unreality of the scene between daydream and observable action.
In Daydream Mumbai Ekici is with the camera team on Elephanta Island near Mumbai, India. There are many stairs, 120 steps in total, up to the temple where she wants to do her video performance at the temple. Once at the top, she was refused permission to be filmed on the white bench in front of the temple. So she went back down the stairs with her camera team and discovered a field with cows and an ox. An ideal location for the film shoot.
She sits on her white bench and does athletic and slightly lassive movement exercises. She is looking at the camera and not at what is going on behind her. The cows are irritated and run away, only the ox stays and looks at her with its large animalistic posture.
