Artist Statement

Günsu Hayriye Ozan’s practice investigates how the self is shaped over time—pressed, stretched, and reformed by language, migration, and the subtle ways others perceive her. As a queer immigrant navigating English as a second language, she has become increasingly aware of how identity is not a fixed state but a material that reacts to impact. Every misunderstanding, every moment of hesitation, every shift in how someone sees her leaves its mark. What she once explored through plastic as a physical material, she now understands, was always a reflection of herself: a body and identity continually molded by external forces. In her recent work, Ozan turns directly to her lived experience as the central medium. Through raw video recordings and intimate written scripts, she documents the emotional texture of speaking, misspeaking, being misunderstood, and being selectively seen. These videos are not performances of characters—they are unfiltered moments in which she confronts her own visibility and invisibility. They capture the internal monologue that unfolds when language becomes a barrier, pressure, a mirror, or an unexpectedly tender space. Her work traces the ways language shapes social belonging: how accents create distance; how misunderstanding creates isolation; how someone’s interest in her can suddenly shift once she meets or fails to meet their unspoken criteria. She looks closely at the exact moment when a person begins to see her—or when she realizes they never did. These encounters become the sculptural forces that shape the self, the pressures that bend her into new forms. Ozan’s process is iterative and introspective. She records, returns, and repeats. Each script is a layer; each video is a trace of another version of herself in the process of becoming. Her work holds the fragments—uncertainty, humor, grief, desire, resilience—and allows them to coexist without needing to be resolved. Through this ongoing practice, she studies herself as a material: impressionable, responsive, and constantly transforming through contact with others. Ultimately, Ozan’s work examines how identity evolves through the act of communication, especially when language does not come easily. It reflects the vulnerability of living in translation and the strength found in articulating that vulnerability. By using her own body, voice, and experience as the primary medium, she explores how a self is shaped not only by its origins, but by the pressures, misunderstandings, and connections it encounters along the way.