Say Something 40 Times and It Becomes Real, 2015
Single-channel video with sound, 6’52”

Produced on the occasion of her first solo exhibition at Galerist Studio, this video emerges from Gizem Karakas’ simultaneous position as both artist and employee at the gallery, where she worked as Visual Communications and Artist Liaison.

Using a forehead-mounted GoPro camera, Karakas recorded an internal gallery meeting from her own point of view. Over this footage, she layered a voice repeatedly stating, “I have to have a solo show this year,” spoken forty times. Borrowing from a Turkish saying, “Say something forty times and it becomes real”, the repetition functions as an internal incantation, oscillating between desire, self-persuasion, and manifestation.

The work is conceptually grounded in Michel de Certeau’s notion of la perruque, as described in The Practice of Everyday Life: the act of working for oneself within the time and space of one’s employer, while ostensibly fulfilling assigned duties. In this context, the video becomes both document and enactment of a subtle form of appropriation—of time, attention, and institutional structure.

Extending this logic, all works in the exhibition were produced at Galerist during working hours. Rather than extracting material value, the gesture reclaims time itself, repositioning labor as a site of negotiation between personal agency and institutional frameworks.