Balance Board (from the series Unknown Sports)

Nilbar Güreş works in various mediums, including collage, painting, drawing, photography, video and sculpture, to examine systems of injustice built on identity, social domination and oppression. The artist constructs provocative scenes that focus on being seen and ignored in the public and private spheres, and explores ways to transform these experiences into possibilities of resistance.

In her "Unknown Sports", a series of photography, collage and video, the domestic space women are confined through tradition and social prejudices is restaged in a gym – a place the hegemonic perspective generally identifies with men. In the games taking place in the absurd setting which brings together items used for housework with sports equipment designed to display one’s physical prowess, both the athletes and spectators are housewives, dressed in their everyday clothing. In her work titled "Balance Board" from this series, a young woman in red high heels and a bra worn backwards tries to maintain her balance on the handles of a pot placed on a balance beam covered with lace, while she performs acrobatic movements. "Unknown Sports" reverses the social codes and prejudices associated with genders by combining domestic activities ascribed to women with athletic gestures which require intense practice, strength, discipline and dexterity. "Balance Board" is part of a triptych with two other pieces, "Pommel Horse" and "Girl’s Parallel Bar".