Elif Satanaya Özbay, “Circassian Beauty”, performance

In 1865, showman P.T. Barnum introduced the "Circassian Beauty" to American audiences, responding to a growing fascination with Circassian women fostered by travel writers, researchers, and philosophers who had visited the Caucasus and the Ottoman Empire. His exhibits portrayed Circassian women as the ultimate embodiments of purity and beauty, reinforcing Orientalist fantasies. Capitalizing on these narratives, Barnum transformed the “Circassian Beauty” into a spectacle that fueled 19th-century beauty trends and shaped racialized hierarchies of desirability. The lived realities of Circassians, indigenous to the North Caucasus—marked by forced displacement under Russian imperial expansion and survival—contrasted with the romanticized Western image. Yet, the Circassian Beauty trope persisted, influencing ideals of femininity across history.

The artist embodies Barnum’s “Circassian Beauty”, performing in the framework his spectacle while introducing plot twists that dismantle the myth. Accompanied by live music from a Circassian accordion player, she shifts between time periods and languages—alternating between English and Adyghe—to weave a fragmented narrative filled with contradictions and distortions, deconstructing the power of this historical spectacle.