SELIN Davasse
Straight from the Mare’s Mouth
She’s strong. She’s fast. She’s tired. She competes, she (sometimes) wins, but she’s defined by her losses. Success divides us all into masters and servants. She’s the dark horse, she has many talents, but her own life, she never masters.
Dying is not enough, she wishes she were never born. She knows those who ride on the powers of others, they don’t mind flogging dead horses. She’s spooked, she’s saddled, she’s stabled. Her caretakers carry a whip, but call her a friend. They know she's too well-bred to be a runaway horse, and good horses get ridden.
She’s a beast with a burden. Bred for masculine warfare and surplus value production, trained into resentful submission, she now carries on her back the weight of feminine recreation. Workhorse, racehorse, showhorse: she is every horse, and she hates every minute.
Come gallop a mile in an overzealous performer’s horseshoes. Giddy up! You’re on top of a living breathing career-machine.
Selin Davasse (b. 1992, Ankara) lives and works in Berlin. She repurposes disparate textual and performative techniques to speculate on the ethics of hospitality between a bestial feminine stranger, a heterogeneous public and the institutions framing their encounter. Embodying different narrative selves—each with her own syntax, voice, gestures, and postures—she translates systems of thought into intimate and playful utterances that slip between speech and song, forming a porous and unstable relationship with the viewer.
Her performances have been presented at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024); Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2024); Art Asia Now, Paris (2023); steirischer herbst, Graz (2023); Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2023); Institute for Contemporary Arts, London (2023); Art Encounters Biennial, Timișoara (2023); Wiener Festwochen, Vienna (2022); MEDITERRANEA19 Young Artists Biennale, San Marino (2021); Volksbühne, Berlin (2021); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2021). https://selindavasse.com
CREDITS
Custom look by
Kemal Yılmaz
Music by
Alexander Iezzi
Photo’s by
Joe Clark and Kemal Yılmaz