Artl@s 2016-2017

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27 avril 2017

La Biennale d’Istambul

par Ceren Özpinar (University of Sussex)

Istanbul Biennials are one of those city-wide events in which the venues have usually been public spaces including vacant buildings, car parks and old public baths. These locations have served as ambiguous places for art, often making the visitors doubt themselves when it has come to tell the difference between settings and artworks. While this situation has in some cases re-introduced temporary encounters between residents and art or the Biennial, it has also re-defined their relation to the city itself. Being such a large and intricate city, Istanbul is a perfect yet challenging place for making a truly city-wide exhibition. Some attempts have been made in 1997 in which the biennial spanned from the airport to main train stations and Karanfilkoy, an old shantytown near Bosphorus. In 2005 it was spread over the infamous Beyoglu district, and in 2007 it covered three different central areas by locating in massive venues. Last attempt has come in 2015 in that the Biennial claimed to be dispersed across the whole city. This seminar will discuss the ways in which the urban public space of Istanbul has been represented and reproduced through Istanbul Biennials over the years, and how the Biennials have redefined the relation of residents to the city they live in.

Ceren Özpınar is British Academy Newton International Fellow at the Department of Art History at the University of Sussex. She received her PhD in History of Art at the Istanbul Technical University in 2015. Her research spans from contemporary biennials to feminist art historical narratives. Her PhD thesis, The Art Historiography in Turkey, presented a critical analysis of histories of modern & contemporary Turkish art from 1970 to 2010, and has been published by the History Foundation Yurt Publishers in 2016. She has also published her research on biennials in peer-reviewed journals, which centres upon the questions concerning the concepts and the locations of Istanbul Biennials.

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