Empoisened Princess

2017 Performance, Installation
Wide view of a gallery workspace with a person in a long brown hooded garment supported on hands and knees across the pale wooden floor, reaching forward over rows of playing cards. Photographs and handwritten material cover sections of the white walls, while cables, bags, clothing, flowers and other collected objects are distributed around the room.
Rear view of a person in a long brown hooded garment standing in a narrow passage between dark, weathered wooden doors. The hood covers the head and much of the face as the person looks toward daylight and the street through the opening ahead.
Wide gallery view of a person in a long brown hooded garment standing high on a metal stepladder and reaching toward a dense irregular arrangement of photographs on a white wall. An open case and other materials lie on the floor below.
Rear view of a person in a long brown hooded garment walking along a narrow uneven street lined with worn buildings. They pull a wheeled shopping trolley containing flowers and other materials. Parked vehicles, exposed masonry, metal shutters, patched plaster and scattered street debris extend along the road.
A person in a long brown hooded garment sits on the gallery floor with legs spread around an irregular pile of dusty broken building fragments. One hand is raised near the face while the other rests beside the debris. Small photographs are attached low on the pale wall behind.
View from behind a seated person in a long brown hooded garment looking across an open demolition site. Rubble and broken masonry fill the foreground and middle ground; partially removed façades expose interior walls, rooms and window openings, while intact multi-storey buildings rise beyond the cleared area.
Side view of a hooded person standing behind a large street-facing window and extending one arm outward, index finger pointing across the glass. Cars, a yellow taxi, pedestrians and multi-storey buildings are visible outside.
A hooded person sits on the gallery floor beside a large pale sack filled with rough fragments, one hand raised to the mouth. A wheeled shopping trolley with a pink-and-black bag stands beside them, while small photographs and papers are attached to the wall behind.
Wide view of a hooded person seated low against a white gallery wall with both arms extended outward. Rows of playing cards cover the floor in front of them, while a dark case, cables, stones, plant material, photographs and other collected objects spread across the surrounding floor and walls.
Close rear-side view of a hooded person writing directly on a rough pale exterior wall beneath large black spray-painted letters. One hand holds a marker against the wall, adding smaller writing below the existing graffiti.
Wide gallery view of a person holding a projector overhead with both hands. The projector casts an image of a construction machine onto playing cards arranged across the floor. A long brown hooded garment hangs on the wall to the right, with a metal stepladder and other installation materials nearby.
Two people face one another across a metal stepladder in the gallery. One person in dark clothing raises an open hand toward the other, who wears a long brown hooded garment and raises one hand with two fingers extended. A small red object rests near the top of the ladder between them.
A hooded person stands behind a low wall of weathered brick and stone in an overgrown urban site. Exposed masonry, missing and patched wall surfaces, pipes, metal fencing, graffiti and dense vegetation surround the figure, with worn building façades behind.
A hooded person sits on the gallery floor with legs apart and torso leaning toward one side, one hand touching the floor beside rows of playing cards. A large projected image of a rough urban surface covers the wall and part of the person’s garment.
Frontal view of a hooded person seated on the floor with legs apart and hands resting low between them. A large projection of rough ground and building fragments covers the wall and part of the garment. A small leafless plant stands to one side, while rows of playing cards extend across the floor.
High wide view of the gallery with a hooded person lying on their side on the floor, knees bent and one arm extended near a dark case and tangled electrical cables. Rows of playing cards extend across the foreground, while photographs, handwritten material, clothing, flowers and other collected objects occupy the walls and floor.
Wide view through an opening into the gallery. A hooded person sits on the floor at left amid scattered materials. An irregular photographic archive covers the far wall, handwritten pages and small images occupy another wall, and a long brown garment, playing cards, cables and collected objects are distributed through the bright room.
Frontal view of a white gallery wall densely covered with many photographs arranged as a large irregular block. Below them, an open case sits on the floor with small objects nearby, while additional photographs form a vertical arrangement along the wall at right.
Several people kneel and crouch around rows of playing cards on the gallery floor. A hooded person bends forward among them with one hand close to the cards; two other people aim cameras toward the floor-level arrangement, while another person leans in to look closely.
Photography: Derin Cankaya, Merve Bektaş, Cansu Yıldıran, Levent Basaci

If Tarlabaşı was a princess, to where did this princess wander, where did she live, who were her mother, her father, her friends and her lovers, why was she poisoned, how is the treatment process?

Tarlabaşı was constructed in the 16th century for the diplomats and senior managers working at Pera (today's Beyoğlu). In the 20th century, the district began to change when embassies and diplomats moved out from Pera to Ankara after Ankara was elected as the capital city. Additionally, as non-Muslim populations suffered from discriminatory policies throughout republican history and most abandoned the country, urban transformation particularly affected the Rum population in the Tarlabaşı district.

Over time, the district became a living space for people excluded from capital accumulation, including Kurds forced to leave their hometowns due to war, the LGBTI+ population, and immigrants and asylum-seekers. In 2012, Beyoğlu municipality began an urban transformation project to "cleanse" Tarlabaşı. People working and living in the Beyoğlu district were removed from their homes, and the streets of Tarlabaşı, along with many non-sovereign cultural memories and historical buildings, were destroyed along with their cultural memory.

Empoisened Princess, which can be viewed as a form of urban mapping, searches for traces of gentrification in the urban landscape, scraping away urban memory to reveal what has been lost and erased.

The performance took place over 10 days, with seven days on the streets of Tarlabaşı and four hours of rest in the gallery space each day. Standing somewhere between open workspace, installation, and performance, Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu investigated the present state of the streets and the memory of the district, and through it, the city itself and its transformation; searching for the variation between what has been attempted to be effaced and what currently stands as reality.

Close view of playing cards arranged face-up in a precise grid across a pale wooden floor and partly over a large pale blue rectangular sheet. Different suits, numbers and illustrated court cards form a repeated field of small rectangular images.
Photography: Derin Cankaya, Merve Bektaş, Cansu Yıldıran, Levent Basaci
Frontal installation view of a large rectangular sheet densely filled with handwritten text mounted on a white wall. Directly below it, a broken pale ceramic sink rests on rough stones and debris on the floor, with additional broken fragments scattered to one side.
Photography: Derin Cankaya, Merve Bektaş, Cansu Yıldıran, Levent Basaci
DAIRE SANAT
Wide view of a pale gallery wall lined with a long horizontal sequence of handwritten pages at eye level. A broken pale ceramic sink rests on stones and debris directly below the pages near the centre of the otherwise sparse room.
Oblique close view along a gallery wall displaying a continuous row of handwritten pages. Dense black handwriting fills the nearest sheets almost completely, while successive pages recede along the white wall into the distance.
Wide view of a white gallery wall with a long horizontal row of handwritten pages. Above the pages at right, red, yellow and green hoses curve in parallel arcs on the wall, while a black cable hangs vertically beneath them. A circular pool of bright light falls across the installation.
Close frontal view of the same broken pale ceramic sink resting low against the gallery wall on rough stones and debris. Dirt and small fragments spread across the wooden floor beneath it, with several larger broken pieces lying to the right.
Close view of red, yellow and green hoses mounted on a white wall in several parallel downward-curving arcs. Their ends remain visible at both sides, and the overlapping curves cast shadows onto the wall behind.
Installation view: Daire Sanat, 2018
Presentations
This Is Not A Performance, curated by Simge Burhanoğlu, Daire Sanat, Performistanbul, Istanbul, TR, 2018
Empoisened Princess, live performance and interactive installation, in collaboration with Performistanbul and ALAN Istanbul, ALAN Istanbul, Istanbul, TR, 2017
Credits
Empoisened Princess, by Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu, live performance and interactive installation, 10 days, 8 hours per day, 2017
In collaboration with Performistanbul and ALAN Istanbul
Performance Installation Urbanism Precarity Ghosts Non-Western Queerness Collective Memory Public Space
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