ART CITIES: Berlin-Yaşam Şaşmazer

Heavily invested in the conflicts arising between “I” and “the other” during the early periods of Yaşam Şaşmazer’s artistic career, her recent works continue to explore these polarities in the light of the reciprocal relationships that are shaped between human beings, non-human entities and nature. The artist’s works comprise sculptures and installations that are predominantly produced with natural materials such as wood, clay, paper and papier-mâché, including also organic and found materials as mushrooms, seaweeds, lichens, earth, rocks, tree branches and roots. Şaşmazer’s figurative sculptures focus on the human body.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Zilberman Gallery Archive

Yaşam Şaşmazer’s figurative sculptures focus on the human body. While some of them feature recognizable faces and bodily forms, others depict anonymous, amorphous and at times amputated human bodies or body parts. These body parts which undertake both human and non-human. In “So flows the tide of things”, Yaşam Şaşmazer investigates various notions of what it means to be human that shed anthropocentric thinking habits, focusing on processes of transformation, openness, and becoming. In her exhibition “either/or” Şaşmazer had already begun to peel away from her sculptures the shell of human form. Now, they have become yet more fluid towards the Other; increasingly distancing themselves from the shape of the human body, opening to ambiguity and the potentialities of the open-ended. Şaşmazer’s sculptures are remarkable for a formal language characterized by fragmentation and fluid transitions: deformed backs, which fold like fabric; kneeling lower bodies that open towards the sky; circularly shaped torsos, without head or arms, lying on pedestals; forms evoking a shell or integument, which, supine, bares its vulnerable interior. These abstract, biomorphic shapes elude the unambiguous certainty of traditional figurative sculpture, while at the same time their sinuous contours evoke protection, vulnerability, and submission. Fragility and vulnerability are often perceived as a weakness, but they are in fact an important aspect of life – dynamic states, which open up a space for growth, bonding, and re-invention. They point up our mutual dependency and remind us that even the most stable structures rely on fragile systems. Yaşam Şaşmazer sees bodies not as closed entities, but as porous vessels, which render symbiosis and transformation tangible – an idea closely tied to the post-humanistic discourse. The body, long viewed as a border between the self and its environment, begins to soften at its edges, lose its singularity; it grows plural. Tears in the fabric become openings; in-between spaces arise, which take in other forms of life and enter into novel forms of relationship. In this way, metamorphosis becomes a process of convergence. “Undergoing metamorphosis means being able to say ‘I’ in the body of the Other,” writes philosopher Emanuele Coccia, whose thinking constitutes a central reference point for Şaşmazer’s investigations in this exhibition. While in earlier exhibitions Şaşmazer often worked with paper, in So flows the tide of things she principally uses clay – both fired and unfired – alongside other casting materials. Negotiating between these two states, Şaşmazer tests the tension between durability and transience. Ultimately a form of earth, clay reminds us that Şaşmazer’s sculptures form part of a cyclical process; appearing in the exhibition not only as shaped material, but also as a site-specific element in the space. The artist’s watercolors, of which she includes five works in this exhibition, likewise point to a cyclical process: the circular, core-like forms suggest beginnings or endings and generate with their lightness and fluidity a strongly contrasting atmosphere. The watercolors – like the sculptures – are rendered in warm, organic tones and allude to the role of the earth in Sasmazer’s artistic practice. For the installation “Tides of things I-IV”, Yaşam Şaşmazer has reconstructed parts of her studio and transformed them into an archive that unfolds across two rooms. On four industrial shelves, sculptures enter into a dialogue with natural materials such as moss, stone, and tree branches, as well as with failed castings, casting molds, and unfinished objects. In presenting her materials and sculptures next to one another, Şaşmazer blurs the boundaries between raw material and artwork and challenges traditional values. The glass surfaces integrated into the shelves make unusual insights possible; they invite us to discover what is usually hidden and establish connections between the various elements. With the installation Şaşmazer questions systems that are founded on hierarchies and exclusions. She suggests a horizontal, pluralistic approach and treats artistic production as a dynamic cycle.

Photo: Yaşam Şaşmazer, © the artist, Courtesy Yaşam Şaşmazer and Zilberman Gallery

Info: Zilberman Gallery, Schlüterstr. 45, Berlin, Germany, Duration: 1/3-4/5/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.zilbermangallery.com/