After completing an apprenticeship as a printing plate maker, she studied art history and art education at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich from 1994 to 2001, while simultaneously pursuing a degree in sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. From 2001 to 2003, she studied performance and fine arts at the Braunschweig University of Art and graduated in 2004 as a master student of Marina Abramović. From 2003 to 2007, she was a member of the Independent Performance Group, founded by Abramović, which was dedicated to promoting young international female performance artists.  
 
To date, Ekici has presented over 300 performances and installations in more than 70 countries. Her awards and fellowships include, among others, the fellowship from the Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul, the Rome Prize from the German Academy in Rome (Villa Massimo), the Paula Modersohn-Becker Art Prize, and the Cultural Exchange Fellowship from the State of Berlin. In addition, she has completed artist-in-residence programs at Operndorf Afrika in Burkina Faso and, most recently, at the Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts in Charleston (USA).

Work Title: Kaffeeklatsch

In her performance Kaffeeklatsch (2019), Nezaket Ekici explores her sense of belonging to German society—both as a migrant and as an integrated German. She poses the central question: Where does she locate her own German tradition, and what exactly is “German tradition”? To do so, Ekici appears in three traditional costumes—from the Black Forest, the Spreewald, and Thuringia. She meets with her own pair of doppelgängers for a coffee klatch, drinking coffee with herself, each time in a different costume. With ironic humor, she chats about seemingly trivial everyday topics in the former private quarters of the former Werenzhain feudal estate, which is now used as an exhibition space. In her playful video, Ekici reveals the fine line between otherness and belonging, thereby highlighting how identity emerges from a interplay of ritual, cliché, and lived experience.

Camera: Branka Pavlovic, Julian David Bolivar
Video editing: Branka Pavolic
Sound design: Shruti Malik
Costume design: Nezaket Ekici
Tailor: Süleymann

Props: Table, tableware, coffee, cake, costumes, cuckoo clock, wallpaper, paintings, dolls