Warning: I go full Oprah in this one! For the penultimate in the corona-time series of socially distanced podcast-readings, I chat with artist Elif Saydam. Saydam is a painter and writer, and has worked with Broken Dimanche Press in the past, most notably for a book and project for Berlin Art Week 2019 together with Vera Palme. The week after the podcast recording, they opened a show of new paintings at Tanya Leighton Gallery. They've contributed the mind-blowing online memory game Déjà Vu to Tropez's online summer exhibition REALITY. The conversation swirls around the practice of painting, writing and features some reading of their work.
Check out the show at Tanya Leighton Gallery here: https://tanyaleighton.com/current
For more info and documentation, as well as the chance to buy the blockbuster itself, check out: https://www.brokendimanche.eu/new-index#/colt-jonners-desecration-of-descent
The Silverfish-Featherduster romance Von Fleisch und Zucker can be found in the Montez Press Radio archive here: https://radio.montezpress.com/#/archive ... Just search for Elif Saydam and you can queue the piece in the webplayer.
For documentation of the exhibition Selfing, on view at Mélange in March of 2020, and to read the texts, click here: http://megamelange.com/elif-saydam/
And a link to the book by Daniel Lavery: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781982105211
Elif Saydam is a Turkish-Canadian artist, writer and performer based in Berlin. Past performances and exhibitions include Miss St’s Hieroglyphic Suffering at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, emic etic at Between Bridges in Berlin, No R.E.M. at Ashley in Berlin, and Le Misanthrope 1666 at La Biennale de Montréal, among others.