Melİsa Kurtuluş
Melİsa Kurtuluş
AUTUMN 2025 | September
Melisa Kurtuluş is a site-specific performance artist and researcher whose work unfolds at the intersection of memory, movement, sound, space, and bodily resistance. She approaches the body as a fragile archive shaped by both personal and collective wounds. Drawing from her background in physics and cinema, as well as experiential trainings in performance art, body and movement studies, and Mitakara, her interdisciplinary practice bridges analytical thought and creative expression.
Alongside her artistic production, Melisa leads workshops that focus on body, sound, and visual research. Since 2018, she has been an active member and co-founder of the Antakya Performative Collective, continuing her collaborative explorations of embodied practice.
During her residency at DAA, Melisa’s research extends beyond individual mourning to explore the possibilities of counter-witnessing. Her project reflects on the earthquakes of February 6, approaching them not only as a natural disaster but as a human-amplified destruction, focusing on the mountains and the devastation caused by stone quarries.
“If the mountains disappear,
what remains?
Can the historical witness of mountains be erased?”
Through these questions, Melisa seeks to weave layers of witnessing and counter-witnessing, opening a space of collective memory and resistance through voice, word, and movement.
Performance: Melisa Kurtuluş & Hatice Yıldız Züreyk
Date | September 20, 2025
Location | DAA Art Residency, Bodrum
As part of her residency at DAA, Melisa Kurtuluş presented a performance in collaboration with Hatice Yıldız Züreyk.
The work unfolded around themes of collective memory, ecological destruction, and embodied witnessing, moving beyond personal grief to reflect on shared loss and resilience. It centered on the mountains destroyed by stone quarries opened after the February 6 earthquakes, and gave form to their silenced testimony through voice, language, and movement.
Through this performance, the artists created a space for communal reflection and remembrance, echoing DAA’s ongoing commitment to supporting artistic practices that engage with the intersections of ecology, memory, and social consciousness.