Of Land, Performance, and History: A Profile on Alize Zorlutuna

The act of being an accomplice has deeply resonated with queer interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator Alize Zorlutuna. Reflecting on her practice, Zorlutuna writes that, “Where allyship often feels self-congratulatory and/ or passive, being an accomplice suggests transgression. For me, it means acknowledging what you do not know or cannot understand—the things your privilege might make it impossible for you to perceive—listening to learn, embodying empathy and accountability, championing the voices you want to amplify, and using what privilege you have to work for justice.”¹

Born in the US, Zorlutuna grew up spending summers in Turkey where she was immersed in language, textiles, and storytelling. She earned a degree in International Development Studies at Dalhousie University (2005) before moving on to train as an artist. She later completed a BFA in Sculpture Installation at OCAD University (2010) and an MFA from the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University in 2013. Currently based in Tkarón:to (Toronto), Zorlutuna continues to focus on interventions, the politics of geographies and plant ecologies. There is an undeniable urge in her work to deconstruct the tangible power relationships in order to affirm solidarity and social justice across cultural lines. 

Issues related to environmental and social justice and, importantly, queer culture, have also had a decisive impact on her artistic practice. Perhaps no other artist has influenced her work more than Cuban artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985). Zorlutuna notes that Mendieta was: 

The first woman of colour amongst contemporary artists, that I learned about, and the fact that I was one of very few women of colour in my classes. I felt a resonance with her and her work. The way she expresses the relationship between land and displacement spoke to me on a profound level, and is now a recurring topic in my art. By using my body to work directly with the land in various ways, I owe something to Ana I think.²

After researching and developing the project The Presence of Absence: Searching for Mendieta (2011-14), Zorlutuna realized that North American sumac is the cousin plant of sumac found in Turkey. Through the teachings of Indigenous scholars, she learns that sumac (the plant) is tied to both her native Turkey and the occupied land she has come to live and study upon. Although sumac found in Turkey and Indigenous sumac in North America are slightly different in genus, both propagate naturally and through farming, and as Zorlutuna reflects, the plant “has become a kind of material bridge between my homelands, a way to materialize diasporic grief and longing, and the complex responsibility of living on occupied territories as a settler and descendent of immigrants.”³

For Zorlutuna, sumac becomes that missing essence, the organic and symbolic connection to rebuild relationships with the land. In her recent performance leaving the table: how to draw an imagined place (2019), she serves sumac in a gathering of invited guests as a gesture of hospitality and a way to contend with our relationship as treaty people in Canada. There are many inventive uses of sumac in Zorlutuna’s site-specific projects. For example, she used grounded powder sumac to draw delicate gestural lines. In the 2019 group exhibition “Interlude” at the Art Gallery of Burlington, Zorlutuna carved out the words “take time to mourn / make time to resist” on the wall and filled the injury with sumac berries. This strong protest with a gentle gesture weaves together the processes of grief and the beauty of the natural world. 

In Crawl (2012–ongoing), Zorlutuna’s most long-running and enduring performance, she documents herself crawling up the steps of renowned museums, galleries, and educational institutions across the world. In this series, she provocatively questions the systematic issues at the core of colonial institutions by showing the difficult and precarious nature of this performance. By drawing attention to the extractive and possessive practice of so-called knowledge gathering (through the colonial theft of artefacts), Zorlutuna addresses the desire of exiled women artists who are excluded by the system they are examining. In this instance, Zorlutuna places herself at the intersections of these imposing complications of colonization of the land and body. The stairs literally end where the street begins, an apt metaphor for the ways in which the dispossessed reclaim the means to climb towards freedom, but can also easily tumble down. 

Works such as Facing East (2019) attempt to deconstruct the Islamic ritual prayer, wherein the serenity of surrender is exercised five times per day by standing on the intricately woven prayer carpet facing the Qibla (this direction is towards the Kaaba, which is located in Masjid al-Haram in Mecca). Zorlutuna creates a perpetual mihrab by removing the central section of the prayer carpet. The cut from the carpet resembles the shape of mihrab, the arched niche in every mosque that geographically directs congregants in prayer, and ultimately makes the land visible through the carpet. By reconnecting prayer with the land upon which the act of prayer takes place, Zorlutuna is evoking aspects of Mendieta’s earth-body works from the 1970s; however, her positioning of ritual also points to a broader symbolism of communal practices. 

More recently, Zorlutuna has come across and collaborated with important Indigenous scholars and practicing artists such as Bonnie Devine, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, and John Johnson.⁴ These artists have had a tremendous influence on Zorlutuna’s decision to carve out her artistic path of discovering the correlations between history and storytelling in performances, installations, and new media art forms. The global social justice uprisings of the past year have magnified the direct correlation between colonization, state-sanctioned brutality, and environmental issues. Artists like Alize Zorlutuna highlight the ways in which we cannot be silently complicit anymore—but more importantly, that the only way we can escape disaster is to decolonize our thinking and walk the path of better relations with the help of the Indigenous peoples of all lands. 

For more on Alize Zorlutuna’s work, see: alizezorlutuna.com 

Sam Shahsahabi is a multidisciplinary artist based in Thunder Bay, ON. Born in Iran, he obtained his BFA from Azad University (Tehran) in painting. After completing an MFA at York University (Toronto) in 2002, he taught at the White Mountain Academy of the Arts, where he also served as the Director of the James K. Bartleman Art Gallery. Sam is currently an associate professor at Lakehead University. www.samshahsahabi.com 

1. Alize Zorlutuna, “Hit List,” Akimbo, accessed June 22, 2021, https://akimbo.ca/akimblog/alize-zorlutuna-artist-toronto/.
2. Author conversation with the Artist, April 21, 2021.
3. Ibid.
4. Author conversation with the Artist, May 8, 2021. Additional artists include Joce Tremblay, T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss, Anne Riley, and John Aitken.

This article is published in issue 38.3 of BlackFlash magazine. Get this issue