About Baran Ulusoy

^{As an Istanbul-born visual artist based in France, I explore urban alienation and power structures through a practice in sculpture and installation. By fragmenting and reassembling storefront mannequins—symbols of our capitalist conditioning—I subvert the innocence of the toy to construct satirical fictions. Ultimately, my work invites the viewer to playfully subvert the reality of an oppressive world.}

The foundations of my artistic practice are rooted in Istanbul, where I grew up within the Kafkaesque reality of an autocratic and increasingly conservative power, unchanging since my birth. My relocation to France and my subsequent reflections on the nature and limits of freedom of expression catalyzed the evolution of my practice in figurative volume. This evolution unfolds through several conceptual stages.

The origins of this approach trace back to my childhood. That initial play—which consisted of modeling clay arms, torsos, and heads, and grafting them onto my articulated toys with needles to create "companions" for them—transformed over the years. Inspired by the American sculptor George Segal, I first created plaster casts of my friends. Gradually, my attention shifted toward street storefronts, which I perceive as white cubes inserted into semi-public and semi-private spaces. By their very nature, window mannequins are neutral and idealized forms; they are capitalist objects of consumption onto which we project our desires. In my practice, I salvage, fragment, and reassemble these mannequins to reveal the alternative realities generated by this system.

Through a Foucauldian lens, I approach the body not merely as a physical form, but as the primary site where power imprints itself and produces "docile bodies" (corps dociles). The storefront mannequin thus becomes the ultimate incarnation of this standardized subjectivity, shaped by political and capitalist injunctions. By fragmenting and reassembling these figures, my sculptural gesture aims to deconstruct this mechanism of subjection, attempting to break the body's obedience to restore its subversive force.

My approach is deeply nourished by my fascination with human relationships in metropolitan environments and the profound loneliness within a crowd. The oppression exerted on our perception by architecture, propaganda, and advertising constitutes a central axis of my work. I explore the traces of these feelings—which I experienced so intensely in the urban monotony of Istanbul—in other cities today, reconfiguring these existential residues through an effect of displacement (décalage).

The notion of play and the toy, symbols of childhood purity, collide today with the "corrupted" adult world through political substitutions and propositions. I address this continuity of the playful gesture through a prism that is both humorous and satirical.

In a world where it has become impossible to escape the relentless news cycle and the hegemony of power, political consciousness is inescapable. Accepting the fact that this power always ends up infiltrating intimate life, I materialize in my compositions our desire to escape this established order. Ultimately, my goal is not merely to deliver a statement to the viewer, but to provide them with a conceptual "tool" to apprehend this oppressive and complex world, to confront it, or to playfully subvert it.