30th Anniversary of The Istanbul Biennial

Lukas Wassmann*

Wassmann’s photographs are accompanied by some of the forty questions that the curators listed in their first curatorial statement, which seek to determine the aspects, subtleties and ethics involved in neighbourliness.

*b. 1980, Zurich, Switzerland, lives in Berlin, Germany

How can we get along with one another?

What does it mean to show empathy and care for the people around us, and how should we relate to our neighbours?

In a world of reinforced borders, social and political atomisation, and rising distrust and fear, what does it mean to be a good neighbour?

Alongside these images of everyday interactions, a series of questions investigate the expectations we place and habits we devise concerning the people around us.

How have behavioural norms changed around the world with globalisation and increased borders?

The fourteen biennials İKSV has organised up to now have enabled the formation of an international cultural network between local and international art circles, artists, curators and art critics by bringing together new trends in contemporary art every two years.

After the first two biennials realised under the general coordination of Beral Madra in 1987 and 1989, IKSV decided to adapt a single curator system following the Istanbul Biennial directed by Vasıf Kortun in 1992.

14th Istanbul Biennial:
SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms
Curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

"It looks for where to draw the line, to withdraw, to draw upon, and to draw out. It does so offshore, on the flat surfaces with our fingertips, but also in the depths, underwater, before the enfolded encoding unfolds.

This city-wide exhibition on the Bosphorus considers different frequencies and patterns of waves, the currents and densities of water both visible and invisible that poetically and politically shape and transform the world. With and through art, we mourn, commemorate, denounce, try to heal, and we commit ourselves to the possibility of joy and vitality, of many communities that have co-inhabited these spaces, leaping from form to flourishing life.

SALTWATER takes place in museums and also in temporary spaces of habitation on land and on sea, such as boats, hotel rooms, former banks, garages, gardens, schools, shops and private homes.

There is a slowing down of the experience of art due to the travel between venues, especially on ferries. This is very healthy: salt water helps to heal respiratory problems and many other illnesses, as well as calming the nerves."

13th Istanbul Biennial:
"Mom, Am I Barbarian?”
Curated by Fulya Erdemci


The notion of the public domain as a political forum was the focal point of the 13th Istanbul Biennial.

The idea of the public domain has diverse historic, philosophical, theoretical and geo-political roots and definitions. No matter how many interpretations exist, they are fueled by questions of democracy, related to equality, civic rights and political debate.

From the existence of an artwork to the freedom of social media and the designation of urban spaces as public, the notion of public domain can cover a vast area where social engagement and political public debate are possible.

It is this potentiality of public domain discourse that the exhibition aims to articulate. The title of this edition of the Istanbul Biennial, "Mom, am I barbarian?", is a quote from the Turkish poet Lale Müdür's book of the same title.

12th Istanbul Biennial:
Untitled
Curated by Adriano Pedrosa ve Jens Hoffmann


The 12th Istanbul Biennial explores the rich relationship between art and politics, focusing on artworks that are both formally innovative and politically outspoken. It takes as its point of departure the work of the Cuban American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996).

Gonzalez-Torres was deeply attuned to both the personal and the political, and also rigorously attentive to the formal aspects of artistic production, integrating high modernist, minimal, and conceptual references with themes of everyday life.

Visitors were encouraged to become active readers, not just silent recipients, of the artworks presented here. To paraphrase Gonzalez-Torres, the 12th Istanbul Biennial is untitled because meaning is always changing in time and space.

In the spirit of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who genuinely wanted to make this world a better place and believed that his art could be a catalyst for change, we welcome you to the 12th Istanbul Biennial.

11th International Istanbul Biennial:
What Keeps Mankind Alive?
Curated by WHW (What, How and for Whom)


The 11th International Istanbul Biennial takes its title from the song 'Denn wovon lebt der Mensch?', translated into English as 'What Keeps Mankind Alive?'. The song closes the second act of the play The Threepenny Opera.

Still, as the title of exhibition, it surely could be seen as being grandiose-not to mention the question mark, implying that the point is in the asking and not the answering-making it even more pretentious.

The International İstanbul Biennial is ahighly representative art manifestation, burdened as such by the usual complexity of dynamics between the local, the national, and the international in all its guises and titles, and a grandiose title seems quite appropriate-sufficiently open to marketing, political, theoretical and artistic uses and misuses.

10th International Istanbul Biennial:
Not Only Possible, But Also Necessary: Optimism in the Age of Global War
Curated by Hou Hanru


The 10th International Istanbul Biennial is not conceived as a thematic exhibition in the traditional manner; rather, it emphasises artistic production based on collective intelligence and the living process of negotiating with physical sites.

The biennial focused on urban issues and architectural reality as a means of exposing different cultural contexts and artistic visions regarding the complex and diverse forms of modernity.

The exhibition sites selected for this edition, are symbolic for particular social, cultural or political aspects of the city's and country's modernization, which will be explored under significant titles. More than 100 artists and groups from 35 countries participate with more than 150 projects.

9th International Istanbul Biennial:
"Istanbul"
Curated by Charles Esche and Vasif Kortun

The title of the 9th Istanbul Biennial was simply 'Istanbul'. Curated by Charles Esche and Vasif Kortun with assistant curators Esra Sarigedik and November Paynter, it refers both to the real urban location and the imaginative charge that this city represents for the world.

'Istanbul' as a metaphor, as a prediction, as a lived reality, and an inspiration has many stories to tell and the Biennial will attempt to tap directly into this rich history and possibility.

The curators have selected 53 artists and artist groups. Around half have been invited to live and work in İstanbul for between one and six months. In contradistinction, the other half of the Biennial is made up of work from elsewhere around the world.

The 2005 İstanbul Biennial promises a distinctive approach to the burgeoning phenomenon of international biennials, one that is rooted in the place it is shown while always looking out at what is relevant for the rest of the world.

8th International Istanbul Biennial:
Poetic Justice
Curated by Dan Cameron

The 8th International Istanbul Biennial was curated by Dan Cameron under the title “Poetic Justice” and hosted approximately 80 artists from 40 countries.

The 8th Istanbul Biennial raised the questions of “What is justice? Why has justice emerged today as a question of pressing concern? Is justice possible in today’s globalized world?”

And with the title Poetic Justice which takes its cue from the literary device of the same name will reveal part of its underlying premise as an attempt to reconsider the wide stylistic breach between two different forms of art-making: one which takes as its subject the world and its affairs, a second one that address concerns which are more identified with the viewer’s inner life.

7th International Istanbul Biennial:
egofugal: fugue from ego for the next emergence
Curated by Yuko Hasegawa

The 7th International Istanbul Biennial curated by Yuko Hasegawa under the title EGOFUGAL: Fugue from Ego for the Next Emergence hosted 63 artists including 9 collaborative groups.

Biennial raised the question of how we can liberate ourselves from our egos while maintaining self-esteem. Egofugality is not selflessness, or self-sacrifice, or compromise.

Yuko Hasegawa perceives Egofugality, as a worldview in the three “c” visions, which are a collective consciousness, collective intelligence, and co-existence verified by strong egofugal subjects.

The three c elements will eventually replace the three m elements man, money, and materialism that played key roles in the progress of 20th-century civilisation and which simultaneously spawned considerable problems and sickness.

6th International Istanbul Biennial:
The Passion and The Wave
Curated by Paolo Colombo

Istanbul, this great city, standing at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, has been a vast polyglot center for hundreds of years.

The title of this biennial is an acknowledgement of the cross-national character of its culture and a homage to this city through the name of one of its great voices.

"Dalga" or "Dalgas", which means "wave" in Turkish and "passion" in Greek, was the stage name of Antonis Dhiamantidhis, a singer of amanédhes-long drawn melodies related to the Turkish gazels that are composed of couplets, and that are interspersed with the interjection aman, "alas" or "mercy" in English, both for improvisational purposes and as an emotional outlet.

"The Passion and the Wave" is a title that evokes an emotional state, as well as a physical entity, that of the sea, which is an overriding presence both dividing and uniting this city.

It indicates the exhibition's conceptual matrix, but also a profound interest in individual histories, and in the sensory qualities and degree of emotional intensity that are the cornerstones of all artistic creation.

5th International Istanbul Biennial:
On Life, Beauty, Translations and Other Difficulties
Curated by Rosa Martinez

The 5th International Istanbul Biennial is the result of a desire to set up a fruitful and critical dialogue between contemporary artists and audiences from different parts of the world. Furthermore, it fulfills the purpose of establishing new links and collaborative networks between cultural institutions, creators, curators, critics and other art professionals.

Istanbul has been thought of as a metaphoric gate between East and West, between Asia and Europe.

The city of Istanbul is unique; therefore the Biennial could not be reduced to one exhibition presented at a specific venue.

The walks through the city should become part of the exhibition's discourse. Moreover, special emphasis was laid on the connection between the arts and the city in the 5th International Istanbul Biennial.

The 5th International Istanbul Biennial thus became encounter, symposium, workshop - more of an all-embracing experience than just an exhibition.

4th International Istanbul Biennial:
ORIENT/ATION: The Vision of Art in a Paradoxical World
Curated by René Block

The end of the 20th century is a time of movable juxtapositions: Nothing remains as it is (Nichts bleibt wie es ist). The margins move towards the centre and the old-established frontiers shift to the periphery. Fixed systems dissolve in drifting passages.

In the absence of social justice, no peaceful coexistence and none of the political utopias have succeeded against the "terror of realisation" (Heiner Müller).

The common strategies of politics and ideology have failed -creating a void, an ideal situation for fanatics of creed and color and any ambition. At the same time, art and artists have decolonized from being utilised through ideologies. They define their field using forms, materials, contents and contexts now according to the dictates of their own responsibility, language and mythology.

The 4th International Istanbul Biennial took the challenge to locate the common ground of artists from all over the world to create an open atmosphere of visual arguments and discussions.

3rd International Istanbul Biennial
Directed by Vasif Kortun

The 1990's witnessed the signs of a crisis of unforeseen proportions. The changes all over Europe in 1989 were in some respects a maturation of this immense transformation. As the writer Thomas McEvilley has pointed out, "Western culture as it enters the 1990's is somewhat inchoately seeking a new definition of history that will not involve ideas of hierarchy, or of mainstream and periphery, and a new, global sense of civilization to replace the linear Eurocentric model that lay at the heart of Modernism”.

The theme of The 3rd International Istanbul Biennial was The Production of Cultural Difference. This represents an umbrella concept under which individual countries have their own curated shows based directly on this concept or on its interpretations.