Sena Başöz, the Nurse Series, 2016, Collage, Drawing, Video Installation
In 2009, Sena Başöz did a series of performances about a nurse who did not know what to do with herself. For two weeks she was in disguise of an 80s nurse, who is both a personal admiration as well as part of her personal history. She took pulses of strangers in Times Square. She had been thinking on how nurses’ caregiving and selfless attitude is associated with women among the society as an idealised gender role. During that period, the relationship of Art and Healing became important to the artist. She realized that bandages are collages applied to the wound, that surgery injures first for the sake of healing, and that healing requires privacy. Her video work Doctoring, consisting of a series of operated photographs, emerged as a result of this period. 7 years later her alter ego called her back. Başöz thinks of the creature in human nature as the only link that ties us not only to each other but also to nature: This is our only dependable side. The wound requires dressing, but in reality it can also heal by itself in time. A nurse wishing to transform the world knows this well.