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View of the Antrepo customs warehouse, the main venue for the Istanbul Biennial, on the Bosphorus shore. Photo by HG Masters for ArtAsiaPacific.
If you haven’t been to Istanbul in a while—or even just in the past two years—it might not be quite the city you remember. The Gezi Park protest movement that began in May, and the subsequent social unrest across Turkey, followed a decade of economic growth and massive urban transformation. The demonstrations prevented the construction of an Ottoman-style shopping mall in place of the park (at least for now) but the city will proceed with its plans to demolish poorer neighborhoods, relocating their communities to peripheral high-rises. Vast infrastructure projects that threaten the city’s ecology—including a third Bosphorus bridge, the world’s largest airport and a new canal—are also in the works.
Of course, certain fundamental attributes of Istanbul haven’t changed—the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, the city’s historical sites, the ubiquity of tea houses. To visitors, change manifests itself most evidently in the gentrification of central neighborhoods where local shops and restaurants are being displaced by chain stores and malls, especially along the famous pedestrian thoroughfare İstiklal Caddesi. (For a more detailed account of this recent history, the documentary Ekümenopolis (2012), here with subtitles in English, is a good primer.)
On İstiklal Caddesi, the Emek cinema building under renovation (left) and the Demirören mall (right). Photo by HG Masters for ArtAsiaPacific.
Although the Gezi-related protests have now subsided, an unresolved tension still lingers in Istanbul. So when the international art world congregates here in the second week of September for the opening of the 13th Istanbul Biennial—and countless other exhibitions and events, including a new art fair—visitors new and returning will detect a different mood: a more politicized populace and cityscape.
This new spirit in Istanbul will undoubtedly be reflected in many of the artworks and exhibitions, as well as in how residents talk about their government and politics. If it is a success, the Biennial, cheekily entitled “Mom, am I Barbarian?” will offer deeper perspectives on the forces at work in Istanbul and in the world at large, pinpointing what the “barbarians” (that is, artists) are doing to resist or counteract them.
In recent weeks, a local painted a staircase between Cihangir and Fındıklı in rainbow colors in a self-inspired beautification campaign. The city painted them gray, supporters re-painted them in rainbow colors, with anti-war slogans. Here, the original hues. Photo by HG Masters for ArtAsiaPacific.
ArtAsiaPacific will provide a look at some of the many events and exhibitions that are happening around the city between September 10–17. Additionally, AAP has compiled a map of the locations of these select events and organizations in Istanbul. It can be viewed here.
AAP will later post a photo essay from the week, as well as a review of the Biennial by Catherine Milner in AAP 86 (Nov/Dec).
13th Istanbul Biennial: “Mom, am I Barbarian?”
September 14–October 20 (preview Sept 11–13)
Antrepo No.3, Galata Greek Primary School, Arter, Salt Beyoğlu and 5533 (İMC).
www.13b.iksv.org (including maps, schedules & visitor info)
CHRISTOPH SCHÄFER, Nika Riots, 2013, pastel and acrylic on paper, 160 × 200 cm. Courtesy the artist and IKSV.
For the 13th edition of the Istanbul Biennial, Curator Fulya Erdemci has selected around 90 international artists who examine the idea of “the public domain as a political forum.” These artists address uses of public space, the concept of citizenry, “spatio-economic justice,” “agoraphobia” and the political models of consensus versus conflict. Their projects range from the architectural and interventionist to the participatory and collaborative. Many of them have previously exhibited in Istanbul (in the Biennial or elsewhere), or have personal ties to the city.
While the official artist list has not been released, the Biennial will feature Turkish artists Nasan Tur, İnci Eviner and Şener Özman, as well as video artist-theorist Hito Steyerl, architectural-installation-maker Fiona Connor, sculptor of the occult Jimmie Durham, comic videos by Mika Rottenberg, activist-filmmaker Amar Kanwar and the late Amal Kenawy (1974–2012). Also look for works by Shahzia Sikander, Basim Magdy, provocateur Santiago Sierra and Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s service-oriented projects, which the artist herself calls “maintenance works.”
The Biennial organizers have decided to withdraw from public space itself—largely because of the municipality’s lack of cooperation. Instead, the event will be situated in five venues. Antrepo No. 3 customs warehouse on the Bosphorus, where previous editions of the Biennial have been held, will be the primary one, and the event will extend to the nearby Galata Greek Primary School. On İstiklal Caddesi, the lobby of Salt Beyoğlu and the entire of nonprofit art center Arter will be given over to the Biennial. The final venue is further afield, across the Haliç (the Golden Horn) in a small art space called 5533, a modernist fabric complex called İMÇ 5533 designed by Doğan Tekeli and Sami Sisa, which is itself worth seeing for the mosaics by artist and poet Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS OF TURKISH ARTISTS
Gülsün Karamustafa “A Promised Exhibition”
September 10, 2013–January 5, 2014
SALT Beyoğlu & SALT Galata
GÜLSÜN KARAMUSTAFA, Etiquette, 2011, mixed-media installation with porcelain plates, cutlery, glassware, gold leaf, dimensions variable. Courtesy SALT.
Filling three floors of SALT Beyoğlu, the diverse paintings, collages, installations and videos of the first-ever survey of Gülsün Karamustafa trace the cultural moods and currents of Turkish postwar society. The kitschy style of her collages refers to the latent nostalgia inherent in the “arabesque” style of popular imagery that accompanied mass migration from villages to the cities in the postwar era. Other works tell stories of modernization in the midcentury Republican era, as well as the plight of ethnic minorities, particularly Greeks, who were displaced from Turkey.
The Parisian-based, post-minimalist sculptor Sarkis has created a series of works on two floors of the gallery that appear to mirror themselves, but are slightly and significantly different. One of the “lost exhibitions” that opened during the tumult of the Gezi Park protests—and thus were largely unseen by the public—Sarkis’s reprised show will feature a new light installation, the “Rainbow” referred to in the title, in its final two-week run.
With a knack for implicating himself in whatever system he is criticizing, Burak Delier continues to explore his core interest in the relationship between capitalism and contemporary art in his show at Pilot Galeri. In the video Crisis and Control (2013), Delier captures corporate types doing yoga in business dress while interviewing them about the conditions of neoliberalism and its supposed perks—such as “flexible” working hours.
The young conceptualist Meriç Algün Ringborg, who divides her time between Istanbul and Stockholm, inaugurates Galeri Non’s new exhibition space with a series of works “constructed through a set of instructive sentences found in the dictionary.” The audio work Metatext (2013) is comprised of sentences about the process of creation, whle two videos continuously show a pair of hands tying an “eternity knot” and performing the “infinity trick” with a pen.
Cengiz Çekil: “With a Cleaning Cloth” & Nilbar Güreş: “Open Phone Booth”
September 17–October 26
Rampa
NILBAR GÜREŞ, BERF, 2011, from the series “Open Phone Booth,” C-print, 108 × 150 cm. Courtesy Rampa.
In Rampa’s main space, veteran sculptor Cengiz Çekil debuts a new installation, With a Cleaning Cloth—144 versions of mixed-media canvases made with string, hooks, paint and lace make up a meditation on craftsmanship, serial production and femininity. In the street-level showroom, Nilbar Güreş’s photographs and videos from the “Open Phone Booth” (2011) series depict the improvised lifestyles of Kurdish-Alevi villagers in eastern Turkey who still lack access to basic infrastructure including roads, water and phones.
Turkey’s representative at the 2013 Venice Biennale, the filmmaker Ali Kazma holds his first exhibition of photographs in Istanbul. Kazma apparently has taken more than 8,000 images in bookstores, libraries, print houses and book binderies. Curator Régis Durand has selected and categorized a selection of these images, revealing the intensity of Kazma’s pursuit—his interest in the physical form and concrete embodiments of knowledge.
With some prescience, in 2012, Işıl Eğrikavuk won the Full Art Prize for a body of work about the historical and future transformations of Taksim Square. Her new project is a multimedia installation that echoes a football field, created for her first solo show at Egeran Galeri, explicitly addressing the recent Gezi Park protests and anti-government movements in Turkey through the characters of a police officer and a demonstrator.
If you weren’t in Turkey during the three weeks of Istanbul’s Gezi Park-related protests in May and June, photographs by the collective Nar Photos, Şahan Nuhoğlu, Ahmet Şık and Nazım Serhat Fırat, on view at DEPO, offer perspectives on that seismic period from an embedded, local perspective. The images capture the range of the Gezi experience, from the exhilaration of open defiance to the humor found in slogans and graffiti, as well as the brutal suppression of protests by the police.
TREVOR PAGLEN, Prototype for a Nonfunctional Satellite (Design 4; Build 3), 2013, aluminum and mylar, 4 meters in diameter. Photo by Batu Tezyüksel. Courtesy Protocinema, Istanbul/New York; Artpace, San Antonio, TX; Metro Pictures, New York; Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco; Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne.
TEMPORARY EXHIBITIONS
Trevor Paglen
September 12–October 25
Protocinema, temporary location in Kurtuluş
New York-based Trevor Paglen has created a four-meter-tall prototype of a satellite that would reflect light from the sun onto the earth’s surface. This mirror-like orb, Prototype for a Nonfunctional Satellite (Design 4; Build 3) (2013) will be accompanied by a video of intercepted footage from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, aka a drone) of ironically picturesque imagery of the earth’s surface.
The international group exhibition “Unknown Forces,” curated by director of Seoul’s Samuso, Sunjung Kim, looks at the technological, economic and social elements of urban transformation. There’s plenty of humor and mischief at work—Nam June Paik’s vintage disco-themed Global Groove (1973) sets the tempo—even with the more tragic subjects, like the recent Tohoku earthquake, the division of the Korean peninsula and the lives of day-laborers depicted in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s film Unknown Forces (2007).
THE NEW ART FAIR
ArtInternational Istanbul
September 16–18
Haliç Kongre Merkezi
www.istanbulartinternational.com
The first edition of ArtInternational Istanbul welcomes 63 galleries from Turkey, the Middle East, the United States and Europe to the Golden Horn, in an effort to give Turkey a viable art fair. The fair begins after the Istanbul Biennial has opened, opting for a rather unconventional Sunday VIP opening. The usual art-fair retinue of supplemental activities includes specially commissioned projects, a section for local nonprofits and a curated video program.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
Elio Montanari: “One, No One and One Hundred Thousand”
September 10–December 26
SALT Galata
James Richards: The Screens
September 7–October 27
Rodeo Gallery
Anish Kapoor
September 10, 2013–January 5, 2014
Sakıp Sabancı Müzesi
Arslan Sükan: INtheVISIBLE
September 11–October 12
Galerist Tepebaşı
Şükran Moral & VALIE EXPORT: Despair & Metanoia
September 12–October 16
Galeri Zilberman
Kalliopi Lemos: I am I Between Worlds and Between Shadows
September 11–November 10
Ioakimion School for Girls, Fener
TALKS & EVENTS
Non-Stage
Performances by Nevin Aladağ, Volkan Aslan, Çete-i Nisvan, Gabriel Lester, Olof Olsson, Ahmet Öğüt.
September 11–14
various locations
SALT
Gülsün Karamustafa
September 12, 7 PM (in Turkish)
Walk-in Cinema, SALT Beyoğlu
Catherine David & Elio Montanari
September 13, 7 PM
Auditorium, SALT Galata
The Union of the Imaginary (VOTI) Panel
September 14, 3–5 PM
Auditorium, SALT Galata
Ibraaz Talks
September 14, 2–5 PM & September 15, 2–3 PM
Café, SALT Beyoğlu