Beril Or
About
Beril Or’s interdisciplinary works explore memory, trauma, and healing and move between comfort and disturbance. She has shown in galleries such as SOMArts, Root Division, Berkeley Art Center, Palo Alto Art Center, ICASF, and SOEX. In 2009 she received the State Contemporary Artist Award in Turkey and in 2019 the Cadogan Contemporary Art Award, among others. Beril holds an MFA in Art Practice from San Francisco State University and BFA in Sculpture from Hacettepe University.
Maintenance Actions
I nurture my art practice by prioritizing rest, daydreaming, and downtime instead of constantly focusing on being productive. Taking breaks helps me reconnect with my creativity and discover new ideas. Downtime, often considered unproductive, is essential for reflecting and processing emotions and ideas. By balancing work with rest, I create a space where my creativity can flourish, and daydreaming sparks my creativity and inspires new ideas. These times can be in the form of taking walks by the lake, sitting by the water and listening to music and singing along while people are not around, collecting rocks and memories, taking long epsom salt baths while listening to music and reading, taking naps, staying in bed longer than usual, and so on.
"Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest and eight hours for what we will."
stills from the performance video
In 1886 workers in The United States pushed for an eight-hour workday: “Eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, eight hours of what we will.” In this performance first I am sleeping for 8 hours as my art practice, in other words, my work hours. Then I sleep for 8 hours as something that I will, and finally, again, sleeping for 8 hours to rest. 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, Jonathan Crary describes sleep as the last vestige of humanity that capitalism cannot appropriate. It’s the only time you’re not contributing to the economy because you’re not producing anything that can be sold while sleeping. But I don’t consider sleep as an unproductive state of being. In fact, it is more productive because you’re not contributing to capitalism. My performance 8+8+8 is a productive act because sleeping is also an act of healing (in this case maintenance).