Fiber fill, foam, fabric, thread, rope, glass dome, cork, epoxy, pigment, felt, speaker, seeds, alginate, plaster
47 1/5 x 74 4/5 x 47 1/5 in | 120 x 190 x 120 cm
2026
Shelled Strawberry is an immersive sculptural environment developed through a series of encounters with friends, collaborators, and members of my community. Participants were invited to my studio, where casts were taken from their bellies and later assembled onto the surface of an oversized strawberry form. These casts became the strawberry’s seeds, transforming traces of individual bodies into a collective structure shaped through participation, trust, and shared experience.
Visitors are invited to enter the structure and rest inside. Within the space, they encounter the seeds carried during my month-long Arnavutköy strawberry performance while listening to a heartbeat recorded throughout that process. The work transforms the strawberry into a temporary shelter where personal memory, ecological fragility, and collective presence come together.
Before leaving, visitors are invited to take one of the seeds and continue its journey beyond the exhibition. Accompanied by simple growing instructions, the seeds transfer the responsibility of care to new participants and allow the work to continue beyond the gallery space. In this way, the project extends into everyday life through a growing network of relationships formed around attention, commitment, and stewardship. Part shelter, part vessel, and part gathering space, Shelled Strawberry combines a soft textile shell with a visible metal framework. While the structure appears protective and organic, it is held together by a rigid support system. The tension between softness and structure mirrors the fragile forms of support that sustain both bodies and relationships. Rather than offering protection through isolation, the work proposes connection as a shared and ongoing practice.