Deniz Kulaksızoğlu, askılık (broken angels waiting to wear their special piece that was bought in 10 monthly credit), epoxy, 4 mm bolt-nut, iron, 2023

Fakewhale in Conversation with Deniz Kulaksızoglu: Exploring Fragmented Bodies and Surreal Spaces

Deniz Kulaksızoglu’s work moves through territories where the exhibition space transforms into a distorted fiction and the body becomes fragment, memory, and desire. His two recent shows, Discount Aisle and (Congratulations), open divergent yet complementary paths: the first immerses the viewer in a malformed clone of a store, while the second evokes an inner landscape where school memories and fading dreams stir. At Fakewhale, we wanted to delve into these surfaces by speaking with the artist and exploring the poetics behind his staging and material choices.

Fakewhale: In your work, the body often appears as an ambiguous entity: in Discount Aisle, it’s fragmented, constrained, and multiplied; in (Congratulations), it becomes an elusive presence, desire and absence. What does the body represent for you? Is it a site of resistance, an emotional archive, or something more unstable?

Deniz Kulaksızoglu: Actually, an unpopular answer might be that I don’t consciously think deeply about the body or body politics. However, the notion and image of the body persistently express themselves throughout my work. Perhaps a more accurate way to put it is that the body is the core aspect of my existence and thinking. Since the body is deeply embedded in my perception, it is already present before I consciously consider it, manifesting itself in all my actions and ideas.

But if you ask me directly what I mean by the word ‘body,’ honestly, I don’t have a fixed definition. That’s why the meaning and notion of the body constantly shift in my works. I like to think that ideas have bodies, memories have bodies, moments, experiences, desires, dreams, spaces, and potentials have bodies. Maybe the body is a force that connects, contains, and transforms different realities.

Both exhibitions seem to question what is real and what is constructed, without offering definitive answers. What is your relationship with ambiguity? Do you see it as a reading strategy, or as a condition of contemporary life?

In my view, what we call “real” or “reality” is deeply connected to practical reasoning and action. Reality, as I see it, gives us specific purposes, and through the lens of those purposes, we construct our sense of what is real. So for me, “reality” functions more like a limited, purpose-oriented tool, almost like a strictly defined answer to a particular question. But I’m more interested in what comes before such answers take shape; events, feelings, or moments that are still open, undefined. What I try to create in my work is a kind of liminal space, a space that is neither a question nor an answer.

Discount Aisle is physically located within the IMÇ, a building originally created for commerce and production. The work emerges from this context, transforming into an imaginary store that both mimics and disrupts the logic of consumption. How did you work with the real space? And how important is the relationship between the work and the place that hosts it?

I mostly work in close dialogue with the space. I visit it, experience it, and collect information, or rather, clues, that allow me to both mimic and transform it. In that sense, I see my process as a kind of exploration, even a form of treasure hunting. I never know in advance what I’ll discover or what I’ll eventually create.

I try to listen to what the space offers, what it wants to reveal. As I move deeper into it, I attempt to uncover its potentials; new forms, unexpected relations, possible narratives. But this process is not one-directional. Because it’s an encounter, the transformation is mutual: the space shifts, but so do I. That’s why I’m not particularly interested in space as something architecturally fixed. For me, it’s more about how space is defined. Where does it begin, where does it end? Could it be something more fluid, an entity that transcends physical matter and extends into people, memories, and dreams?

In (Congratulations), the world you conjure is rooted in school memories and fragments of personal growth, yet it never aims at a specific recollection, more a diffuse feeling. What role does indeterminacy play in your work? Are you more interested in evocation than representation?

Representation has never been the goal in my practice. To represent something is, by definition, to be tied to what is being represented. It begins with an object, event, or fact and what follows is a secondary creation derived from the image of that “original.” That process feels dependent, even limiting, as it ultimately refers back to a known reality. It becomes symbolic and symbols are always connected to something larger than themselves.

But I’m not interested in being bound to reality. My work doesn’t aim to explain the world we live in, nor does it pursue grand narratives or definitive statements. Instead, I’m drawn to creating new realities, imagined worlds that don’t serve as mirrors but as spaces of transformation.

Yes, I use memories, spaces, and events in my work, but I never stay fully loyal to them. They are more like sparks that ignite the process of creation. My intention is for these aspects to gain their own independent presence, while still referring to reality, they also begin to form their own. They drift through different times and spaces, sometimes existing in two states or temporalities at once. They assert their own subjectivity and reality through this autonomy. In a way, I hope for them to act like massive planets bending space and time around them, generating their own logic of existence.

Your exhibitions often seem filled with atmospheres that suggest confused desires, missing forms, possible futures. Do you believe that art can be a space to reformulate the concept of desire itself?
One of the reasons my work often revolves around the body is because of the concept of desire. Needless to say, there is a profound connection between the body and desire. The body gives us perception, it gives us a sense of self, and perhaps most importantly, it desires. These four aspects; body, perception, sense of self, and desire are inextricably linked.
Through art, we can play with these aspects, alter them, transform them, even enrich them. In moments of intense longing or desire, I often find myself reimagining my body. With a newly imagined body, my relationship to the world shifts entirely, because the way I interact with the world, the way I touch it, changes. As a result, my mindset, my perception, and above all, my sense of self begins to evolve. I lose my identity, and with it, my former desires.
Even if this transformation is temporary, like a form of imaginative meditation, I see immense potential in this disruption. I believe art can reshape how we see and desire, through the evocative cascade of the imagination. The ‘I’ can dissolve and become the imagination itself. This points to new ways of being, new ways of connecting to and reading the world.

The poems and texts that accompany your work often seem to open autonomous windows, almost like visual streams of consciousness. Is writing for you an extension of the sculptural process or a separate practice? Where does this need for a parallel language come from?
Normally, I try to avoid writing. I don’t like texts that are too explanatory or overly philosophical, those that overshadow the work or contain more information than the work itself. Especially when a piece can only be fully experienced through its accompanying text. I think this issue comes down to the work’s relationship to meaning, and to me, meaning suggests that the work adopts a kind of linguistic structure.
But when I create, I try to move away from rational thinking and reasoning. That’s why it’s always difficult to put the work into words afterward. It feels like something is trying to free itself from the weight of the world and drift into a new realm, and at that moment, one must be careful not to clip its wings or pull it back down. Sometimes a work just wants to levitate.
So when I do write, I try not to make it too long or explanatory. Instead, I see it as a kind of introduction or prologue to the world being created. In (Congratulations), for instance, my relationship with language became more poetic, at least that was my attempt, even before I wrote the actual poem. I wanted to approach the poetic idea as closely as possible, but through materials and objects. The whole exhibition felt like constructing a poem, sculpturally.
Writing the actual poem for the exhibition was a strange experience. On one hand, it was giving expression to the world of (Congratulations) through language; on the other, it wasn’t really about the exhibition, it was the outcome of a free-flowing emotional state in that particular moment. Even the placement of the poem reflected that intention: it was printed on a pillow, which was part of the bed installation wrapped around the column.
By the way, I should add, this whole interview carries the risk of language and explanation getting ahead of the actual work, overshadowing its presence. It’s a paradox I just have to live with.

Your environments often appear provisional, unstable, poised between order and chaos. Are you interested in exploring space as something that can collapse, mutate, or resist?
I believe I’ve already touched on this earlier, particularly when discussing space as something alive, unstable, and shaped by its encounters. So yes, these shifting, collapsing, or resisting qualities are very much part of how I approach space.

What kind of experience do you hope the audience will have when entering your installations? Is personal interpretation, emotional immersion, or even confusion more important to you?
What I aim for, first of all, is to create a space where objects and things come together as if they were not meant to be arranged this way. And yet, there’s a subtle sense of familiarity, like a strange dream. These odd combinations somehow feel like something you’ve seen before, but still, there’s an underlying sense that something is off. That quiet discomfort, that friction between recognition and estrangement, is what I hope the audience enters into.
Beyond the visual and perceptual level, I also want to reach the visitor physically, to inhabit their bodies, not just their gaze. I want to shift their movement, alter how they navigate the space, so that their thoughts are also invited to shift. In a way, I want them to be present, to be aware but without fully knowing what they’re being present or aware of. It’s this disorientation, this subtle defamiliarization, that creates a space for reimagining how things relate to one another.
Within this alien-yet-familiar landscape, visitors encounter familiar objects in unfamiliar constellations. This rearrangement invites them to question their own understanding of the world, their assumptions about relationships between things. The work doesn’t offer a single reading or a fixed puzzle to be solved. Instead, it proposes an art of assembling and reassembling, where parts shift, meanings flicker, and nothing is obliged to be whole. Interpretation is one possible path, but equally valid is surrendering to sensation, to free-floating associations, to emotional resonance or generative, image-driven thought.

What directions are you currently exploring? Are there any upcoming projects or future desires you’d like to share with us?
I’m currently contemplating how to better merge two directions I’ve been exploring: the ephemeral, weightless, immaterial, alongside the highly material, mechanical, even mutant.
As for upcoming projects, I’m planning an exhibition, or better put, an installation that unfolds across a space, shaped by the experience of the obligatory military service I completed this April. Even though it lasted only a month, it was an odd and intense period, rich with subjective impressions and transformative sensations that I intend to rework into a highly personal adaptation.
Interestingly, this will also be the first time that the exhibition doesn’t originate from the exhibition space itself. Instead, it begins from a lived experience far removed from the context of display, and the space will have to adapt to that, rather than the other way around.