ISTANBUL BIENNIAL

Thomas Roueché

The 17th Istanbul Biennial returns, having been postponed by Covid-19, with a team of curators set on exploring the city’s neighbourhoods.

The Istanbul Biennial has for some years – in particular since the events and demonstrations at Gezi Park in 2013 – been an uneasy receptacle for the city’s self-narrative. That year, the show and its sponsors were seen as part of the problem, with protesters taking the Biennial itself as a stage for voicing dissent. The 2015 edition, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev reflected the mid-2010s vogue for mega-shows, its vast ambition criticised as hubristic and disconnected from local conversation. Similarly, Nicolas Bourriaud’s 2019 climate-focused show was forced to move venue, which critics said highlighted the Istanbul art world’s all-too-cosy connection with controversial real-estate development speculation. In each case, the local political conversation overshadowed the sublime and beautiful moments that each of these magisterial shows created, and which were so uniquely afforded by Istanbul’s remarkable cityscape.

That the 2022 Biennial grew out of a long process of discussion and careful listening is evident at every turn. The easy criticisms that are often levied at international curators of local shows – not least their disconnection or dislocation from the city itself – became, as a result of travel restrictions and lockdowns, a main, avowed concern of the curatorial process. Events, parties, press conferences, as well as the artists and their practice, were developed in the context of the new world of social-distancing rules and endless, endless Zoom meetings. As Teh put it to me, in an interview on the occasion of his first visit to Istanbul in June 2022, just three months before the opening: “Intellectually, it was hugely stimulating to be so involved in these conversations and to be disagreeing constantly about what was interesting about these conversations and agreeing sometimes. It was… exhilarating – but it was absolutely exhausting.” Eventually the team would, with the help of I˙KSV director Bige Örer, divide responsibilities within curation.

As a result, it was perhaps unsurprising that this year’s Biennial seemed to offer a synthesis of many previous editions, and felt alive to criticism of previous years. Distributed across the city in clusters, the curatorial team hoped that visitors would engage with the host neighbourhoods while discovering the art. The selected artists showed a connection to relational aesthetics and performance art, again and again returning to ideas of community and collectivity (in this regard it is easy to see a parallel to this year’s Documenta). The curators of the Biennial, which is untitled, referred in their introductory essay to the idea of compost – old forms breaking down to produce new, fertile ground for new growth, spread out across the city. 

The result was a surprisingly humble event that felt more aware than ever of limitations and context. Touring the different spaces – such as the Müze Gazhane, a remarkable new exhibition space recently opened by the Istanbul Municipality in an old gasworks site – the interplay of work and location sidestepped any sense that Istanbul was merely a backdrop to the work of prominent artists. Nearby, arthereistanbul, a venue founded by Syrian refugee artists, was woven into the wider network of the Biennial, which amplified its space and the voices of an imperilled community. 

Çiğdem Öztürk, Footsteps, 2022. Library installation at arthereistanbul.Photograph by Sahir Ugur Eren. Courtesy 17th Istanbul Biennial

This theme continued with Can Altay’s work, which staged Marco Scotini’s Disobedience Archive (2005–ongoing) in Istanbul’s abandoned Central Greek High School for Girls, folding the archival work about resistance into the ongoing protests at Bog˘aziçi University. That the school’s interiors had remained untouched since 1999 added a poignant sense of context to the piece. Elsewhere the iconic, politically radical Bread and Puppet Theatre performed its work, Demons of Society (2022), with a cast of 70 local volunteers in three different locations across the city. The puppet theatre, which was founded in 1963, is famous for distributing bread among its audiences, a simple, radical and effective mode of creating community.

For her Flag Project (2006–ongoing) at Gazhane, Indonesian artist Arahmaiani stood with a group of local performers, each holding a flag emblazoned with a word in Turkish, including “peace”, “nature”, “unity” and “equality”. To the somewhat surprising and discordant sound-track of Turkish protest music – from contemporary rap to the 1970s protest song “Ceviz Ag˘acı” by Cem Karaca – the performers stood in a circle, waving their flags and taking turns to stand in the centre. 

In the context of Turkey’s conflicted public sphere, in which free expression can come at a price, Arahmaiani’s work was a reminder of what a space like the Biennial can offer a city like Istanbul. Perhaps it was precisely this Biennial’s long gestation, its debt to collaboration and collaborative thinking, its calm and quiet willingness to step back and facilitate the conversation of others that made it so effective. And standing on a hot day in the courtyard of Gazhane, watching Arahmaiani’s flags waved high in the air to the sound of utopian songs of past and present, it was hard not to be moved. ◉