Bordello is a documentation of performance Şükran Moral did in 1997 in one of the small brothels in Istanbul. With self-confidence, she dons a nightgown and poses with a cigarette between red nails, offers herself for sale and uses this provocative gesture of self-determination to put off every potential client. At the same time she takes a small side-swipe at the art scene by renaming the establishment the Museum of Modern Art. In her works, which often take the form of performance art, Şükran Moral addresses traditional themes of emancipation art of the 1960s and 1970s and transposes them in a masterly fashion into the social structures of conservative and authoritarian systems. Şükran Moral’s work also highlights how asynchronous social and cultural developments are.
