When you step into a passport photo booth, within seconds you are transformed into a frozen image. In that cramped space, your identity is trapped: the angle of your gaze, the position of your lips, a single fixed moment. But dancer and video artist Doria Belanger takes this static “photomaton” (photo booth) concept and hurls it into the realm of time and movement. At the Institut français İzmir Exhibition Hall, opened on 4 February, the exhibition “Bana Bir Dakika Verin” (Give Me a Minute) invites viewers to look at the simplest and most intense one-minute “identity cards” of the body.
This long-term project is more than a video installation; it is a multi-layered dialogue between the body and geography, movement and time, the artist’s line and the dancer’s presence. Having traversed different corners of the world since 2015, Belanger now turns her route toward Turkey’s contemporary dance scene, infusing the global dance map with a local spirit.
An Enhanced Photo Booth Experience
The “one minute” at the heart of the exhibition is not a randomly chosen duration. For Belanger, this length is the purest interval where the spontaneity of improvisation meets the tension of deliberate staging. In these video portraits — created with a fixed camera and single-take shots — the dancers have neither decor nor the refuge of editing tricks. The body becomes the sole and absolute instrument of expression.
When the viewer stands before the screen, in this condensed one-minute time capsule, they witness not just an aesthetic performance but the dancer’s very way of existing in the world. Repeated gestures, over time, move beyond movement to reveal clues about the individual’s uniqueness and story. These videos break free from the “choreographer-signed” structure of traditional dance performances and redirect the spotlight squarely onto the performer.
The Echo of Geography in the Body
“Bana Bir Dakika Verin” goes beyond neutral backgrounds by incorporating space itself as an element of identity. This extensive collection — stretching from Colombia to Cambodia, Portugal to Tunisia — carries not only the dancers’ bodies but also the architectural texture and cultural memory of the lands they belong to. In this visual journey from Istanbul’s rooftops to Myanmar’s streets, space ceases to be a silent backdrop and becomes a partner that shapes the direction and energy of the movement.
When these portraits flow side by side on screens of varying scales in the exhibition hall, they create in the viewer the sensation of a vast chain of movement. On one side, a body bearing the deep traces of traditional dance; on the other, a contemporary figure trying to escape those very traces… All these singular stories merge on the gallery walls to form a collective rhythm, a kind of “world dance heritage.”
Ten Bodies, Ten Stories from Turkey
The Turkish leg of the project forms one of the freshest and most diverse parts of the collection. During her production process in Turkey, Doria Belanger collaborated with ten powerful names from the contemporary dance scene, adding the vitality of the local scene to this global archive.
Halil İbrahim Aygun, Ece Çamlı, Mustafa Kaplan, Melih Kıraç, Serap Meriç, Canan Yücel Pekiçten, Leyla Postalcıoğlu, Kamola Rashidova, Filiz Sızanlı, and Yunus Emre Şahin.
These ten artists compress not only their own careers but also Turkey’s complex and polyphonic body language into one-minute clips. These portraits — interwoven with Istanbul’s architectural layers and the movement of water — constitute one of the exhibition’s most powerful stops. Here, the viewer breathes not just a dance but the quest for freedom and diversity of movement echoing through the streets of Istanbul and Turkey.
The Dance of the Line: Benttt’s Intervention
The exhibition balances the technological coldness of video with the linear warmth of artist Benttt. Taking images from Belanger’s video portraits, Benttt transfers them to paper using charcoal, conté crayon, and watercolor, continuing to trace the movement. Rather than freezing the dance, the drawings transform its momentum and residual energy into another form.
This linear dance that continues beyond the screen questions the memory left by the moving body. As movement becomes a tangible substance on paper, the interplay between video portrait and drawing becomes the most concrete example of interdisciplinary dialogue. The viewer witnesses how the energy seen on screen reverberates in the brushstrokes of a draftsman.
Becoming Body Together
This encounter at Institut français İzmir redefines dance not as a performative object but as a vital necessity — a state of “becoming body together.” The collaboration between Belanger and Benttt offers a proposal to our speed-dazed modern world: “Pause for one minute and look.” This invitation celebrates an ongoing world heritage and a sensitive, moving human community.
Building a cross-cultural bridge, the exhibition awaits art lovers in İzmir with the universal language of dance and line until 31 March.
Exhibition Information
Exhibition Title: Bana Bir Dakika Verin (Give Me a Minute)
Artists: Doria Belanger & Benttt
Venue: Institut français İzmir Exhibition Hall
Address: Alsancak, Cumhuriyet Blv. No:152, Konak/İzmir
Dates: 4 February – 31 March 2026
