Zeynep Öztürk (2001) holds a BA in Art and Cultural Management from Yıldız Technical University. She began her professional career at Büyükdere35 Contemporary Art Gallery, and later worked within the Cultural Policy Studies Department of the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) as part of the Ortaklaşa Project. She is currently pursuing her corporate career at the Lütfi Kırdar Convention and Exhibition Center.
She writes on contemporary art and the contemporary art economy, with her articles published in a regular opinion column. In addition, she works as a curator at the contemporary art initiative StamboulArt.
Throughout history, the female body and nature have been objectified, controlled, and exploited in strikingly similar ways. Concepts such as fertility, productivity, and domestication have functioned not only as biological descriptors but also as social and political instruments, legitimizing mechanisms of oppression directed at both women and female animals.
This exhibition renders visible how the feminization of nature intersects with patriarchal and speciesist structures.
Images associated with nature—leaf, soil, root—are often aestheticized while simultaneously laden with meanings that conceal violence. Much like the naturalization of structural violence inflicted upon the female body, these images point to forms of domination that remain unseen yet leave enduring traces on bodies.
Within this framework, speciesism and sexism emerge as parallel systems of oppression. Jeremy Bentham’s question, “Can they suffer?”, marks a foundational moment in interspecies ethics. While Peter Singer and Tom Regan argue for recognizing animals as beings with inherent rights, Carol J. Adams reveals how the bodies of women and animals are embedded within the same commodifying discourse. Both women and animals are transformed into consumable objects; their voices are silenced, their existence exploited within regimes of domination.
Frans de Waal’s studies on empathy, cooperation, and justice among animals constitute a key intellectual source for this exhibition. Bird’s-Eye View moves beyond an anthropocentric perspective, tracing the marks of possession, domination, and consumption through a gaze that looks from above without speaking from above. Like birds circulating through the sky, the exhibition proposes an orbital, decentered way of seeing. Perhaps a bird’s-eye view is not a distance, but a new form of proximity—one that does not surveil, but notices.
Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of surveillance, the exhibition questions how classification, observation, and control construct relations of power. Speciesism is not directed solely at animals; it is also a form of discrimination imposed upon women and other marginalized bodies. The shared fate of nature, animals, and women is built upon being regulated, shaped, and consumed—a structure sustained by the continuity of patriarchal and capitalist systems.
To collect, to own, to accumulate—these actions signify not only material practices but also expressions of a desire for power. With humanity’s rupture from nature, humans began to observe and classify nature, as well as female and animal bodies, reconfiguring them according to their own interests. This act reflects not merely a desire to possess, but also an urge to intervene and to dominate.
Centering the intersection of speciesism and sexism, the exhibition interrogates how women, animals, and nature are suppressed, rendered invisible, and consumed in similar ways. From an ecofeminist perspective, this condition is not coincidental but a normalized outcome of patriarchal and capitalist systems. As Adams argues, the bodies of women and animals are systematically commodified and stripped of their qualities.
Bird’s-Eye View invites viewers to think through these multilayered relations via traces, associations, and encounters. Looking is not the same as seeing; owning is not the same as existing. The exhibition creates a space that calls for rethinking habits, consumption reflexes, and relational bonds.
Inviting participants to develop a new ethics, a new sensibility, and a new way of seeing—not “for humans,” but “for living together”—this exhibition opens pathways toward possibilities of co-existence. Bird’s-Eye View is less a critique than a call: a call away from possession toward accompaniment; away from definition toward listening; away from surveillance toward awareness.