Aslı Özdoyuran's recent solo exhibition at 5533, Kulaç is based on the archive compiled by the artist’s grandfather to document the swimming practice of her mother, who was a national swimmer between 1974–1979. The archive keeps a record of both the successes and failures of young swimmers reported in the press during this period. The particular emphasis on the future in these newspaper headlines, and the use of terms such as “tomorrow’s stars,” “golden strokes” and “record-beating machines” evoke questions on how “national” identity has come to be performed. The artist reflects on how nation-states are represented through the athlete’s body, drawing also from the collective affects and debates surrounding the recent victories of Turkey’s women’s volleyball team. Additionally, “Kulaç” brings the swimming pool, which the artist repeatedly encounters in her family archive, interpreted as a space representing modernization, into the exhibition space.

In Turkish, the term “kulaç” describes the distance between the fingertips of two outstretched arms. With the exact measurement varying from body to body, “kulaç” is a non-universal unit of measurement used in the Ottoman period, later abandoned for the sake of modernization. The term came back into use to mean “swimming stroke” in Turkey’s late modernization period. These two different implications of “kulaç,” both in relation to modernity, constitute one of the main sources of inspiration for the exhibition. “Kulaç” consists of bodies that are shaped and twisted by criteria such as tempo, lane and target, as well as the pressure stemming from the expectations of an imaginary audience and success.

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