Scales & a light body (of work)

2026 Installation, Performance
Installation view against a white wall: three thick stacks of white papers hang at different heights from a metal wall bracket, each tightly bound and suspended by silver chains.
a light body (of work) — installation view — Photography: Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu
a light body (of work)

a light body (of work) originates from a formal inquiry into the administration of death and survival within crip and migrant lives: under which legal, bureaucratic, and economic conditions is the migrant body living with a chronic disease governed?

The installation stages the procedural and material frameworks that govern posthumous existence for sick and migrant bodies. Burial regulations, cemetery procedures, health insurance exclusions, and cost breakdowns for repatriation, burial, cremation and transportation of the dead, together with Leman's medical reports, health insurance and hospitalization cost breakdowns and the documents they handed over the Migration Office are suspended within the space as three opaque paper piles. Not feeling like explaining themselves, the installation stands for the right to opacity in the often highly victimized ground.

a light body (of work) addresses the fungibility of marginalized bodies within necropolitical infrastructures: life is produced, conditional, and circulated through forms, fees, and approvals. The hanging structures and chains articulate a suspension state as an impact of the administrative regimes that dictate life and death.

Close view of the suspended installation showing three uneven stacks of white documents wrapped and connected by silver chains. Printed pages are visible among otherwise opaque piles, with chains crossing over their surfaces and holding them under tension.
Close-up of silver chains pressing across a thick stack of documents. A black-and-white printed page with drawings, marks and part of a face is visible on top, while another dense stack of white papers fills the right side.
Photography: Max Eulitz
The performer crouches low on a wooden floor in a white shirt, dark layered trousers and brown boots, holding a short silver chain vertically from one raised hand and looking closely at it. Audience members sit and stand around the edges of the room beneath tall windows with vertical blinds.
The performer kneels on the wooden floor in a white shirt and dark layered trousers, looking down as they pour dark liquid from a small black bottle onto the metal chain cupped in their other hand. Audience members sit close behind them along the walls.
Cropped view of the performer standing in a white shirt, their long thick black braid falling down the front of their body as one hand holds a short silver chain loosely downward. A seated and standing audience watches from the white-walled room behind.
The performer sits on the wooden floor with both legs extended, wearing a white shirt, dark layered trousers and brown boots. Leaning forward, they press the tip of a white stick or marker to the floor beside one boot while audience members sit nearby.
The performer kneels on the wooden floor, leaning forward with one tattooed hand pressed onto a small white card while holding the metal chain in the other. A small black bottle stands upright beside them and audience members sit around the room.
Close view of the wooden floor beside the kneeling performer. A white card painted with the word “ALIVE” in red lies next to a small black bottle, the silver chain and a white stick or marker; the legs and shoes of seated audience members appear behind.
Top-down view of a clear stemmed glass filled with a pale foamy liquid on the wooden floor, framed by the lower legs and shoes of two people at opposite edges of the image.
A small white card bearing the word “ALIVE” in uneven red painted letters leans against a textured white wall above the wooden floor.
The performer sits on the wooden floor against a white wall beneath the suspended installation of three chained paper stacks. Wearing a white shirt, dark layered trousers and brown boots, they hold a short silver chain stretched between both raised hands and look through it; the red-lettered “ALIVE” card rests against the wall beside them.
Scales — performance — Photography: Eliana Kirkcaldy (1–7), Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu (8), Ella Hebendanz (9)
Scales

Scales addresses the limits of the body, labor, and care under ongoing cycles of violence and neglect for migrant lives living with a chronic disease. Over 48 hours at Hours Space Berlin, following a 15-minute initiation during the opening, Leman performs with a pocket-sized chain, creating durational sequences that explore aliveness, sickness, labor, and emotional process. The work functions as a kind of laboratory, asking how small, minimal interventions can still carry resistance and sustain new ways of living together in the context of crip and migrant lives.

The performer kneels on a wooden floor in a bright gallery, wearing a white shirt, dark layered trousers and brown boots. With their torso pitched forward, they hold one end of a silver chain between their lips so it hangs diagonally toward the floor. A large dark painting hangs behind them beside a tall window and radiator.
Photography: Yanne Horas
Presentations
Turnings of Late, with Tanya V. Abelson and Julija Zaharijević, curated by Yanne Horas, hours space, Berlin, DE, 2026
Credits
Scales & a light body (of work)
By Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu
Installation: a light body (of work), Installation with metal chain, hanging structure, printed and empty papers, 2026
Performance: Scales, 48 hours, open to the public for 6 hours each day, 2026
Acknowledgment: Selver Yıldırım, Yanne Horas
Performance Installation Necropolitics Biopolitics Chronic Disease Chronopolitics Precarity Migration Crip Non-Western Queerness Rehearsal as Method Long-durational Opacity Metal Chain
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