HOME TAXIDERMY: ROOM
Performance-workshop series, 2019/2025
HOME TAXIDERMY: ROOM is a participatory event, in which audience is invited to turn fragmented memories of previous dwellings into form. Audience members tell stories of their first bedroom, and, using a limited set of prefabricated elements made by the artist, abstract, three-dimensional representations of past places are created. Through this process we ask together how memories exist within places, how bodily engagement with their reconstruction influences our relationship with these memories, and how treading the borderline between imagining and remembering can help us understand past and present experiences.
Thinking of migration as one of the defining conditions of our world today, as well as the quiet movement that accompanies us in all transitions in our lives, taxidermy is taken here as a metaphor for the act of preserving or reenacting life after it has been removed from its original context: can an outer shell hold the meaning that was once inside it? Can objects carry within them an identity that was left behind?
The work was first presented in 2019 at the ZK/U (center for art and urbanistics, berlin) and revisited and further developed in 2025, as part of the exhibition “Navigating Between Gravities”, Curated by Sapir Hubermann and Dr. Debby Farber.
We lived on the outskirts of the city. My mother made sure that my sister and I always had exactly the same room.
My room had concrete floor and three doors. One of them was always open. There is an old Turkish saying: childhood is like the sky—it never goes away.
My sister and I shared a room. We had a large window and a storage space above our heads that extended into the hallway. Our room was like a ship.
We lived in a long, narrow wooden shack. My family didn’t have much money. I remember looking out the window at night and watching the olive orchard.
Our house was a typical Altbau. I remember my brother had huge blue shelves. In front of our door there was a long corridor, at the end of which was the kitchen.
I loved my room. It was small and felt heavy. In the corner there was always a stack of books.
My room had two beds, one for me and one for my grandmother. My grandmother didn’t always sleep in the room, but the bed was always there.
I lived in one room with my five siblings. I remember that it was dark outside, and we always made a huge mess.
