light reflective paint, mouth blown glass bodies, 3-D printed bodies, salt, acrylic text, stainless steel chains and text, Terry cloth, scent, sound scape, video animation, UV-print on marble

Installationview @ Sanatorium Istanbul

Installationshots @ Zeynep Firt

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OASIS stands as a potential sanctuary at the end of the Anthropocene, a safe space where a nonbinary, value-free and inclusive corporeality is living. OASIS is a post-body spa, where self-care practices meets cyber-humanism, playfully stimulating awareness of expanded corporeality in the digital field.

The human being in their digitally expanded existence is polymorphic – they contain multitude of manifestations and shapes with a vivid spirit. Realms of existence in the digital world are not subjected to the same laws as those of the material space where bodies are neither bound to limited shells nor subject to gravity and require a different attention than their fleshly counterparts. I believe that this expanded virtual existence also needs a revision of its spaces for relaxation and care. With OASIS, I aim to create a physical as well as virtual space that moves between the material and the digital, where physicality is combined with a maximum of consciousness.

The exhibition takes its inspiration from the tradition of bathing running through all cultures of the world from Roman bath houses to Japanese onsen, hamams to the Finnish sauna and thermal baths in Central Europe. Purity and body care have always been closely linked to communion, which is stringently binary gender separated. Closeness, ecstasy, desire, purification and social needs could be lived and satisfied in these places of unity between the body and being under the public but intimate meeting zones without private washing facilities. If we want to carry the idea of the bath further into a new environment, where we have the possibility to explore fresh, democratic and emancipatory social potentials, it is worthwhile to reclaim and develop these traditions.

In contrast to conventional bathing places that are temples of the flesh, OASIS is a place of constant transformation processes, innovation and adaptation: a treatment for the virtual augmentation of our bodies. OASIS is a poly-sensory installation where both, the physical body and the mind, can be prepared for the sensuality of virtuality. The spa becomes an experimental field of mystical otherness. Haptics, materiality, atmosphere, multi-sensuality and relationships of queer, trans-corporeal realities in the installation affect the visitors and promise a regeneration from the solid physicality.

A book titled OASIS- a spa reader accompanies the exhibition.Along my research and artworks the book consists of texts by Christie Pearson, Seçil Epik, Mohamad Abdouni, Melih Aydemir, Sophie Haslinger and Elisa Medde. The book is published by SANATORIUM with the support of  the Austrian Cultural Forum Istanbul.

sounddesign: Ernst Lima
video animation: Joshua Alena