Nezaket Ekici: 100

With her new performance-installation 100 (2025),  Nezaket Ekici opens the exhibition All Spaces Are Different on June 20, 2025. The exhibition runs until July 20 in the project space GOLD+BETON and the public space of Cologne’s Ebertplatz.

In 100, Ekici explores the existential significance of language and communication in the context of cultural and geographical otherness. During her two-and-a-half-month residency at the Opera Village in Burkina Faso, she collected 100 everyday words—terms for objects around her: items from her suitcase, things found in her accommodation, conveyed in French and Mòoré, the local language, often taught playfully by the neighbor’s child Farouck. In return, Ekici shared words from the languages she speaks: German, Turkish, English, and Italian. This linguistic exchange gave rise to a dialogical archive of arrival—rooted in the desire to be understood in daily life.

Ekici translates this experience into a site-specific performance in the light court at Ebertplatz—a hexagonal, open-air space above the underground passage. On the ground lies red earth, symbolizing Burkina Faso and at the same time referencing the dusty atmosphere of Ebertplatz itself. Two performers hold a 50-meter-long paper scroll inscribed with the 100 collected words. Ekici unrolls the scroll, shaping it in accordance with the architecture, while speaking the words aloud—in all the languages she has acquired. The performance can be experienced both from above and below, unfolding into a multidimensional composition of sound, body, light, and memory.

100 becomes a performative language archive, a poetic homage, and a space for reflection all at once. Ekici interweaves personal experience with questions of belonging, visibility, and understanding—and with this work, she opens the exhibition as a space for dialogue, multiplicity, and collective remembrance.

Live Performance: Friday, June 20, 2025, from 5:00 p.m.

Location: Light court at GOLD+BETON | Ebertplatzpassage, Cologne

Free admission | Duration: approx. 2–3 hours