thebody, battlefield
thebody, battlefield creates space for queer and crip vulnerability by exploring collective fungibility trauma, expressing and transforming anger, confronting pain and life's uncertainties with illness, and questioning the Western health and pharmaceutical industries.
Approaching the body as a living archive and drawing dialogues between empowerment, histories of violence, and the colonial pharmaceutical industry through their personal experiences and inherited memories, in thebody, battlefield Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu dives into their queer and crip vulnerability as a queer person with an invisible illness and questions how to find empowerment within the marginalized body in the face of violence and systemic erasure.
The performance costume made of latex is created ritualistically by Leman by incorporating Anatolian healing plants, feathers, and the dust of the studio into drying latex pieces. With its historical ties to the queer community, particularly during the HIV crisis, as well as its use in the medical industry — such as in the endoscopic surgeries the artist underwent five times between 2023–2024 due to chronic illness — latex serves as a medium for the artist to bridge the language of 'I' and 'we,' reflecting the communities to which their body takes part.
