Zeynep Yılmaz is a writer and performer. Working with poetry, she weaves through the audible, spatial and organizational conditions of language. Her work is based on reacting to the relevancy of the setting and the time, essentially responding to a given situation. Her site-specific installations are extensions of her textual practice. She plays with semantic scale, giving a chance to the potential held by the mundane to become a main event, and for the hard-to-digest to become a secondary backdrop in her narratives. She practices tearing down any hierarchical structuring intrinsic to the brain’s comparative thinking. She looks at and extracts from different contexts such as laws of physics, matters of heart, cultural history, sports, and interpersonal dialogues, in order to speculate evidence for the existence of contrasts, which to her, seem to be everywhere and anywhere. In employing auto-fiction, putting together realism and sarcasm as research tools, she transforms her process into time-bound texts, spoken-word performances and publications. She currently lives and works in İstanbul.


Zeynep Yılmaz, yazar ve performans sanatçısı.Yerleştirmeleri ise metinsel pratiğinin uzantıları. Şiirle kurduğu ilişki, dilin işitsel, mekânsal ve organizasyonel koşulları üzerine. Çalışmaları, içinde bulunduğu zaman ve mekanın güncelliği üzerine kurulu olup, karşılaştığı durumlara karşı verdiği yanıtlar şeklinde. Sıradan olanın ana olay olma potansiyeline ve hazmedilmesi zor olanın ikincil bir fon haline gelmesine şans vererek anlatılarında semantik ölçeklerle oynar. Beynin içkin olarak karşılaştırmalı düşünce yapısındaki hiyerarşiyi yıkma halini pratik eder. Fizik yasaları, gönül meseleleri, kültürel tarihsellik, spor ve kişilerarası diyaloglar gibi farklı bağlamlara bakarak kurduğu anlatılar, her yerde var olan zıtlıklara dair kanıtlar sunar. Oto-kurgu ve alaycı bir gerçekçiliği araştırma araçları olarak bir araya getirerek, üretim sürecini metinlere, sözlü performanslara ve yayınlara dönüştürür. 2022’den beri İstanbul'da yaşıyor ve çalışıyor.



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Education

2019-2021 BA Leiden University Arts, Media and Society
2020-2021 Leiden University Minor in Gender & Sexuality Studies
2013-2018 Lycée Français Saint-Joseph d’Istanbul
2016 Boston University modules in Creative Writing & Economics


Residencies

June-December 2024 - SAHA Studio, İstanbul, TR
March 2024 - SOU.L / map the city, arthereistanbul & Aberdeen University, İstanbul, TR.
May 2023 - Garage Gallery Prague, CZ


Publications

2022 Politiks Kills Poetry, with Babi Badalov (AZR), Tariq Heijboer (NL), and Les Conseils Superflus, NL
2022 Decent writers don’t feed the narrative, 15 editions, self published for Snacks Amsterdam, NL


Solo

2024 COPYWRITER, İMÇ 5533, İstanbul, TR
2024 durun anlatayım (wait let me tell you), 400x118, İstanbul, TR
2022 Decent writers don’t feed the narrative, Snacks Amsterdam, NL
2022 Devir-Teslim, De Perzen carpet store, The Hague, NL
2022 Gapfilling (as Practice), “Relational Terms”, The Spectrum Space, NL


Group shows & Performance programs

2024 Urban Acoustic Speculations (Akustik Şehir Spekülasyonları), arthereistanbul, TR
2023 Chills & Quills (Sakin Ol ve Tüyler), Büyük Valide Han, İstanbul, TR
2023 inanınca göreceğim (i’ll see it when i believe it), Büyükada, İstanbul, TR
2023 aspace isa space is a space, Lab23 The Hague, NL
2023 Tip of The Tongue, Garage Gallery Prague, CZ
2022 Flipchart at Instrument Inventors with Aleksandra Komsta, iii, The Hague, NL
2022 Filling the Void with The Spectrum Space, The Grey Space in the Middle, NL


Exhibition Texts For

2023 bir an için, gerisin geri (Gülnihal Yıldız), Kairos Gallery, İstanbul, TR
2023 As long as I remember, as fast as I remember, as strong as I remember (Ferdinand Waas), West Den Haag, NL
2023 Melancholy of Resistance (Ester Gašparova), Gerrit Rietveld Academie, NL
2023 0,9999... (Selver Yıldırım), YAYA / Viable, İstanbul, TR
2023 Plug’n’Play (Onur Tayranoğlu), MUU Contemporary Art Center, Helsinki, FL
2022 A-B-C-aptured (Ester Gašparova, “Metallic Taste of Patience”), Royal Academy of Art The Hague, NL
2021 UA006050455LV_  (Ferdinand Waas and Tim Rosenbaum), White Box Gallery, Oslo, NO


Selected Writings & Poems 

2024 “Which Meant”, mnemotope 004, bog bodies press, NL
2023 “Song”, “Admin Summer”, “Conveyor Belt”, “Strain of Thoughts”, Motley Mag by Worm Literature
2023 “Let the Mountains Hear or The Word for World is Lunch”, Puja Journal, GR
2023 “Absolute Clarity”, Barefoot Collective Journal
2022 “Absolute Clarity”, 2X2 periodical, US
2022 “Assortment II”, 2512 periodical, NL
2022 “01 10”, 2X2 periodical, US
2022 “Gut Seaming or Gut Semen”, Mosquito Newspaper, NL
2022 “I found a chaos trying to put something else in order”, Mosquito Newspaper, NL
2022 Three poems for Sunday Mornings at the River Summer Anthology, amazon.com
2021 “by now I know” longlisted LS Poetry Contest, NL


Copywriting & Creative

2022-2023 / BetterThings Studio, Istanbul, TR
2021-2022 / Second Best Selected Treasures, Den Haag, NL

2019-2020 / Flama Design House, Istanbul, TR
2019 / assistant, Istanbul Jazz Festival, TR
2017 / assistant, 15th Istanbul Biennial “a good neighbour”, TR