17th Istanbul Biennial

Pera Museum hosts the Istanbul Biennial organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) since 1987, with its 17th edition, curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Amar Kanwar and David Teh.

The 17th Istanbul Biennial brings together people and processes, a gathering of more than 50 projects, each the fruit of long-term research and collaboration, each offering resources that the biennial aims to share, amplify and disperse. Prepared over three years of uncertainty and unprecedented isolation, it is above all an invitation to spend time together, thinking, talking, reading, viewing and listening in public, an invitation to ask and questions, and question answers.

Can a biennial be a newspaper? Can it be an archive, reimagined? Could it be fluid like water, a sea of sensations that flow through everyone? Could it be an afternoon of shared learning, of insights gained from old songs, from the birds, the grass, the fish, the buffaloes, or from the living soil? Could it be a season spent sealed in a bottle, fermenting? Or a concert, a series of podcasts or street parades or protests? Could we touch the earth and think together?

The 17th Istanbul Biennial spans 12 exhibition venues in the Beyoğlu, Kadıköy, Fatih and Zeytinburnu districts, as well as over 50 bookstores, second-hand booksellers, hospitals, nursing homes, cafes, metro stops and a radio station.

Over 500 artists, thinkers, writers, poets, researchers, architects, radio hosts, fishermen, activists, stand-up comedians, conductors, ethnomusicologists, ornithologists and many others contribute to the biennial individually or through collective work with local communities.

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