On the 11th International Istanbul Biennial

It is not difficult to be skeptical of the premise of art biennials, as they are often considered the quintessential cultural manifestation of the neoliberal economy as well as the nexus of culture and tourism. In Turkey, suspicion towards contemporary art has been rampant and self-replicating since the late 1980s when major corporations started to provide institutions with financial support, including the Istanbul Biennial. Predictable arguments propagate that the agenda of the private capital impedes or rather disables artistic practice, by making it dependent, mediocre, and often insincere. In the midst of this ongoing distrust, the 11th Istanbul Biennial deliberately makes more political statements than ever before. In a time when corporations are increasing eager to sponsor critical art production and events, Zaghreb-based curatorial collective WHW (Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić, and Sabina Sabolović) face a great deal of protests and condemnations that reek with resentment towards the biennial and its corporate sponsor. Yet, the curators insist that what matters is to negotiate. They might not speak up about the predicaments of the contemporary arts in Turkey, such as the polarization among curators, arrogance towards other artistic practices, and shortcomings of internationalization, but they manage to prompt curious questions: to what extent does the funding source restrict the critical edge of artistic practices? Can art still ignite transformative conversations in politics?

Etcetera..., "Errorist Kabaret" (2009), installation shot at Antrepo No.3. One of the sites of the 11th International İstanbul Biennial in 2009. — Photo by NK Eide, Creative Commons 2.0

The theme of the 11th Istanbul Biennial is based on a song from The Threepenny Opera written by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill in 1928, entitled “What Keeps Mankind Alive?” The exhibition does not simply embrace nostalgia about the past nor does it quickly juxtapose the hegemony of neoliberal capitalism to fascism. Instead, it explores contemporary politics embedded in global inequalities through art practices. It urges for the politicization of art by emphasizing its emancipatory and propositional power. In other words, WHW does not use Brecht directly as a theme but as a springboard to discuss the redistribution of wealth at the economic, social and artistic level. The curators present cutting-edge artworks that prove to be provocative through a variety of oppositions and alternatives to the existing world order. And they achieve it with remarkable transparency.

WHW invites the audience to question not only the role of art practices, but also the discrepancies within the support structures for the arts in different geographies. The Biennial refreshingly involves the immediate regions, including the Middle East, Central Asia, Caucasus, and Eastern Europe, where the institutional support for living artists is very limited or almost non-existing, as opposed to their Northern American, Nordic and Western European counterparts. The exhibition brings 141 works from 70 artists from 40 countries, most of which are unknown to the global biennial circuit.

The 11th Istanbul Biennial proves to be self-reflexive. WHW presents charts and diagrams that reveal the power dynamics in the art world with a particular regional focus. For instance, an inverted world map groups the participating artists according to their “status” — a third from the “West” and two-third from “the Rest.” Visual graphics unveil the distribution of artists according to their current location, age, and gender. Illustrated statistics demystify the status of the artworks on loan and the artists’ relation to commercial galleries. Moreover, for the first time in the Istanbul Biennial’s history, the audience is invited to see the statistical breakdown of the Biennial budget, in terms of both income and expenses. Available in the catalogue and one of the exhibition venues, this data reveals WHW’s aim to be transparent about the process and the realization of the Biennial. This eventually reflects the curators’ interest in examining the discrepancies in production and distribution of artworks, as well as the position of art practitioners in the labor market.

Oraib Toukan’s (b. 1977, Boston. Lives in Amman) “The Equity is in the Circle” (2007-09) captures the economic, political, and artistic vulnerability of a specific region. The two-year intervention and study aims to auction off 16 countries in the Middle East, ranging from Morocco to Afghanistan. With the consultancy of diplomatic advisers, financial analysts, economists, and game theorists, among many other experts, Toukan discusses and illustrates the ways in which these countries with vast resources and conflict-inflated histories can be sold through an imaginary company. The installation consists of videos, copies of correspondences, glossy advertising spreads, as well as sleek corporate logos. While referring to the political and economic instability of the larger region, Toukan also points out that artistic practices are looked down for their weakness to tackle the reality. An economist’s email reads as follows: “you artists [should] have time to digest the real world.” This is precisely what the artworks that are included in the 11th Istanbul Biennial seem to obvert: they observe and assess “the real world” and then propose alternatives, which seems to be their greatest asset.

The exhibition juxtaposes recent works such as Toukan’s with historical ones.Works from the previous generations come from Mladen Stilinović, Vyacheslav Akhunov, and Yüksel Arslan among others. Vyacheslav Akhunov (b. 1948, Och. Lives in Tashkent) who witnessed the stagnation and disintegration of the USSR, as well as the emergence of the post-Soviet republics, deconstructs the political rhetorics he has been exposed to. In “The Doubts” (1976), Akhunov makes figurative interventions into small-scale watercolor replicas of propaganda posters and in his “Leninania” (1977-82) he creates collage works using the predictable iconography of socialist propaganda.

Another prominent artist in the exhibition, Yüksel Arslan (B. 1933, Istanbul. Lives in Paris) was grown up during the first decades of the Turkish nation state. His education in Western literature, philosophy, and art history formed the Surrealist drive in his works. “Capital” (1970-1973) is an example of his distinctive figurative style and unique method. This is a series of paintings with provocative socialist undertones, as they depict mechanized men, enlarged hands grasping working-class homes, and raised fist-headed human figures. Arslan’s rejection of conventional painting materials and his method of mixing stone, coal, butter, honey, tobacco juice, urine, and dirt, reveals his extensive labor in the process of art production, evoking almost a proletarian mode of working.

Armenians at the Istanbul Biennial

The exhibition hosts four artists with Armenian origin who currently live either in Armenia or Diaspora. These artists still hold a ‘marginal’ position, be it imposed or internalized, compared to their peers who are well known in the international art market and the biennial circuit. They are not only connected one to another solely with geographical ties, but they also share experiences associated with uneven, agonizing modernization projects of the countries they live in, as well as precarious positions vis-à-vis their locales.

Hamlet Hovsepian, “Itch” (1975) — Courtesy of the artist

Known as the first video artist in Armenia, Hamlet Hovsepian (b. 1950, Ashnak village. Lives in Ashnak village) has been associated with the left-wing intelligentsia since the 1970s. His short films, Thinker (1975-76), Yawning (1975), Itch (1975), Head (1975), and Untitled (1976) present ordinary life practices that are stripped from their usual background. These acts are repeated against a neutral backdrop that dislocates the performers in the videos from a context of culture, ethnicity, nationality or class. Inconclusiveness of the acts presents a subtle critique of the standardization of daily life and the passivity of culture — the notions that cultural critics vehemently explored in the 1970s. Yet Hovsepian seems to be involved in a deeper interrogation on the notion of time, emptiness, and continuity.

Karen Andreassian, “Ontological Walkscapes” (2009) — Image courtesy the artist

Karen Andreassian’s (b. 1957, Yerevan. Lives in Yerevan) “Voghchaberd Project” and “Ontological Walkscapes” reflect the Biennial’s emphasis on politicization of culture. In these works, Andreassian creates online platforms, ongoing documentary archives that function as alternate platforms to observe, depict, dissect, and represent political, social and geological landscapes of Armenia. “Voghchaberd Project” (2003) takes its cue from Voghchaberd, a village close to Yerevan as well as its inhabitants who suffer from landslides and resist relocation that the local authorities try to impose on them. In the exhibition venue, the viewer is invited to browse the website that includes video clips, maps, historical and factual information about Voghchaberd; he or she shuffles and rearranges the realities of the village and its residents. However the project canvases a larger context — the verge of disappearing and the state of uncertainty.

Karen Andreassian, “Ontological Walkscapes” (2009) — Photo courtesy the artist

Similar to “Voghchaberd Project,” “Ontological Walkscapes” (2009) regenerates the political walks in the neighborhood of the Azatutyan Square in Yerevan with in the virtual space. After the authorities banned large-scale protests that gravitated into this public square after the 2007 elections, a group of individuals organized walks where participants simply discussed politics, which suggested a performative and pacifist take on political dissent. It is precisely these walks that “Ontological Walkscapes” originates from. The project creates a reservoir for individual stories that are inspired from these walks and offers a space to construct memory and history freed from physical space, time, and authorities. This collaboration between the artist, Paris-based writer and critic Stephen Wright, and five students from the Department of Art History at Yerevan State University constitutes a work-in-progress, an alternate site to speak, converse, and archive opposition against the structure and the premises of contemporary politics.

Hrair Sarkissian, “Execution Squares” (2008) — Images courtesy Kalfayan Galleries, Athens/Thessaloniki

Hrair Sarkissian’s (b. 1973, Damascus. Lives in Amsterdam) series of large-scale photographs titled Execution Squares (2008) also tackles the symbolic value of spaces. The photographs depict various public squares in Aleppo, Lattakia, and Damascus where the death penalty of ‘civil criminals’ are undertaken. Portraying empty plazas and people’s absence, these works suggest a static, calm, and almost serene scenography. Execution Squares implies theatricality by monumentalizing the banality of these venues with indiscernible socio-political connotations. It also tends to transcend a documentary urge as it hides the public function of these death squares. This work evokes Sarkissian’s previous photography series, such as Unfinished (2007) and In Between (2007), which capture yet-to-be-finished buildings throughout the Middle East, and deserted post-Soviet landscapes in Armenia. They all create a silent yet fragile layer between the immediate memories of blunt realities and their naïve-looking visual representations.

Anna Boghiguian, “A poet on the Edges of History (Constantine. P. Kavafy)” (2009) — photo by Nathalie Barki

“A poet on the Edges of History (Constantine P. Kavafy)” (2009) is another work that inquires into the representational and the symbolic. Anna Boghiguian’s (b. 1946, Cairo. Lives in Cairo) drawings and watercolors are based on Cavafy (1863-1933), a poet of Greek origin who lived in Alexandria and Istanbul. Boghiguian traces Cavafy’s life, but numerous references infiltrate her visual representation. They allude to history, literature, poetry, myths, and imagination. This massive body of references that the artist has been collecting since 1980 — ranging from the myths of Dionysius and Adonis to the cityscapes of Alexandria—disrupts the seemingly chronological flow of the drawings. The work therefore transforms into visual poetry rather than a linear narrative.

It would be a quick and simple conclusion to say that the participation of artists with Armenian origin — which can be seen ‘generous’ compared to the previous editions of the Istanbul Biennial — is directly related to the ongoing Armenian-Turkish reconciliation efforts. I rather argue that this participation is the result of WHW’s unique field research that is tailored for this exhibition. The curators customize their research by meeting artists living and working in the countries in Turkey’s vicinity, where there is remarkable inadequacy of public and private initiatives supporting artists to travel and exhibit within and beyond their locales. It is not surprising that most curators in the previous Istanbul Biennials preferred to invite artists who are familiar to them or with whom they had already worked before. Eventually, pursuing research-based curatorial work comes at the expense of spending more funds and time. WHW chooses to reverse this ‘tradition,’ which can be seen as a political statement in itself.

The 11th International Istanbul Biennial not only introduces direct and slightly didactic political statements, but it also disrupts generic expectations. The curators refrain from displaying large-scale, spectacular installations, and they step beyond the circle of predictable actors of the international art scene. The exhibition juxtaposes artworks that evoke minor aesthetic gestures, inquiring into the symbolic and the presentational within political and cultural realms. Also, it encourages the viewers to contemplate the power dynamics in artistic production in economically developing countries and beyond. Both the selection of artworks and the transparency of the Biennial beg the question: to what extent can art biennials be subversive? WHW certainly offers a creative answer.