'Against Myself, Repeatedly' begins with an act of care. Batur moves a bar of olive oil soap slowly across her body in a repeated gesture of washing and tending to the skin. The rhythm then breaks as she begins striking her body with the same soap. Nothing changes except the force of the gesture: the same hand, object and body move from care into punishment. As the action continues, the skin reddens and repetition becomes physically visible. Batur is both the person performing the gesture and the body receiving it. The work follows the unstable point at which care, discipline and violence begin to occupy the same movement, leaving their effects inscribed on the body.

Ece Batur is a London-based Turkish artist who completed an MA in Contemporary Art and an MRes at the Royal College of Art. Working across performance, moving image, textile and installation, her current practice focuses on gestures learned through proximity and repetition, often before they are consciously named. She considers domestic labour and care as forms of embodied knowledge passed between generations, asking how these gestures carry discipline, endurance and control alongside care, and how inherited gestures shift as they enter a different body, time or context.