About

We are Panicattack, an artistic and curatorial duo, Emily Demetriou (b.Nicosia, Cypus) and Naz Balkaya (b.Istanbul, Turkey), currently based in London, UK. First meeting in 2013, the experience and embodiment of migration led us to explore the connections between personal experience and larger social structures, and provoked the beginning of our collaboration in 2014. We mostly work with performance, direct action, sound, video and storytelling.

Our respective homelands claim that we should be enemies, so we have employed the model of friendship to counter such national barriers, as well as to test the limits of collaborative practice. Collaboration is our greatest treasure and we use it as an internalised policy and a tool to rediscover the political and emotional joy that appears when we share our lives. In an era of increasing individualism, Panictattack is not only a visual tool that expresses artistic codes, but it is also a living space where weight and oppression turn into miracles.

We represent the notion of a panic attack as a contemporary artistic illness which sickens the young and fresh, confining them to invisible sites. For this reason, we have also developed a curatorial practice where we try to use modes that undermine expectations of the dominant system through humour, chaos and solidarity.

Through both our artistic and curatorial practices, we tackle issues around the topics of migration and home; class and minorities; xenofeminism; the critique of new conservatism and the ‘perks’ of being a millennial against the neoliberal patriarchy. Currently, our work stimulates these issues through a collaborative female voice that questions the history of the occult and magic; mystical practices making a conscious effort of perceiving the earth as a living organism. We analyse the power structures and processes implicated in the evolution of capitalism through the control, governance, domination and regulation employed over female bodies which has been destroying our climate and future dreams. 

Panicattack Duo was formed in 2014 at Kingston School of Art <3