Turks, Jews, and Other Germans in Contemporary Art by Peter Chametzky

Author:Peter Chametzky [Chametzky, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Art; German Art; Multiculturalism; Visual Culture; Candice Breitz; Hito Steyerl; Migration; Diversity; Race Studies; Critical Race
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2021-08-24T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 3.13

Nezaket Ekici, No Pork but Pig (Kein Schweinefleisch, aber Schwein / Domuz Eti Degil, ama Domuz), performance installation since 2004, Türkisch Delight, Städtische Galerie Nordhorn 2007. Photograph Peter Anders, courtesy of the artist. © Nezaket Ekici.

In Flesh (No Pig but Pork), first performed in Varazdin, Croatia, in 2011, Ekici made the difference between a living pig and butchered pork palpable (figure 3.14). In this performance, her own body was visible, as she was dressed in black bikini underpants and a black spaghetti-strap camisole, her eyes covered with a narrow black blindfold and her hands in yellow rubber kitchen gloves. As the audience entered, her amplified breathing was audible, confirming her human/animal presence. The artist was isolated in a white draped interior in which she knelt and lay on a white floor, and at the end rose up, as she interacted physically and emotionally with several pounds of raw pork. When she held a piece of pork up to her nose to smell it, her rubber gloves preserved the Muslim proscription against touching this meat and the audience could hear her inhale. An observer noted: “Movements became choreography as Nezaket started to dance and caress the huge chunks of pork while bringing them to her nose. It seemed as if the raw aroma dazzled her and fueled her insistence in confronting the cultural ‘other’ by merging with it through direct physical and sensory contact.”46 While it cannot help but evoke Carolee Schneemann’s famous 1964 group performance Meat Joy, Flesh (No Pig but Pork), Ekici’s in contrast was performed solo, without the ecstatically excessive eroticism of Schneemann’s epochal piece, and with a specific type of animal and meat. Through her intimate physical and olfactory contact with pork, Ekici at once maintained but also estranged and defamiliarized the Muslim ban on this meat.

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