Art Düsseldorf (Solo)
”Love Is The Answer”
Galerie Judith Andreae, Booth J07,
Düsseldorf, Germany
11 - 13 APRIL 2025 For her solo booth at Art Düsseldorf 2025, Esra Gülmen explores love in all its emotional, cultural, and political dimensions. Presented under the fair's theme "Love is the Answer" and within the "Solo and Projects" section, the selection includes works from her ongoing Uncensorable series, alongside sculptures and an installation reflecting on integration and coexistence. With irony and clarity, Gülmen confronts the contradictions embedded in how societies regulate love and identity.
Her signature mosaic panels, made of hand-painted ceramic tiles, "censor" what is often suppressed-romantic longing, protest, intimacy-turning acts of erasure into visual declarations. Two new works debut at the fair: Uncensorable, Love Letter draws from handwritten notes secretly exchanged across the Berlin Wall, while Integration / (Türkisch > Deutsch) and Integration Il (Deutsch > Türkisch) reflect on belonging and displacement through deconstructed duvets. Both works speak to the resilience of connection-across borders, norms, and systems of control.
Uncensorable, Nipple I
In Uncensorable, Nipple / (2025), Esra Gülmen confronts the ongoing double standards surrounding the female body. The female nipple-constantly sexualized, yet hidden from view-remains subject to cultural censorship, despite the fact that nipples, regardless of gender, are not sexual organs. The artist sees this contradiction as both absurd and revealing. Referencing the Free the Nipple movement, launched by filmmaker and activist Lina Esco in 2012, as well as visual artist Micol Hebron's work critiquing Instagram's censorship policies, Gülmen addresses how female bodies remain disproportionately regulated- especially on social media. Even artistic representations are often flagged or removed, forcing artists to pre-censor their work before sharing it online. In this piece, a close-up of a half-naked female body is interrupted by one of Gulmen's characteristic ceramic mosaics, pixelating the nipple by hand. By turning digital censorship into a physical object, she draws attention to the ways visibility is policed, controlled, and distorted across platforms and public space alike.
Uncensorable, Nipple I, 2025
70.5 x 70.5 cm, handpainted ceramic tiles on wood
750 x 350 cm, wallpaper
Unique
