Mehtap Baydu

Mehtap Baydu is a Turkish artist, born in Bingöl and based in Berlin, who works in performance, sculpture, photography and video. Much of her sculpture is moulded from her own body: head and limb casts in Jesmonite, legs in stoneware, her lips in gold. She also makes self-portraits in handmade Japanese paper.

For Arter, the body in her work is a social, political and symbolic site, bound up with gender, identity and the visibility of people on the margins. Since 2010 she has appeared as "Osman", a male alter ego who refers to the Turkish guest workers of the 1960s. In Breath (Atem), first performed in 2019 at the 4th Berliner Herbstsalon, she fills a room with a balloon of her own breath until she must leave.

Baydu graduated in sculpture from Hacettepe University, Ankara, in 2000, and was a master student of Dorothee von Windheim at Kunsthochschule Kassel. Her solo exhibitions include Derik, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, 2018; Let Your Rain Fall, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 2025; and Loving You Is So Hard!, Arter, Istanbul, 2026. She won the Kassel Art Prize in 2011 and the Marianne Werefkin Prize in 2025. Istanbul Modern holds her work.