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15th Istanbul Biennial

a good neighbour

September 16 - November 12, 2017

Pera Museum hosted the 15th Istanbul Biennial, organized by Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and sponsored by Koç Holding. The 15th Istanbul Biennial brought together artworks by 55 artists from 32 countries, all addressing different notions of home, belonging and neighbourhood.

As one of the main venues for the 15th Istanbul Biennial, the exhibited artists at Pera Museum included Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Alejandro Almanza Pereda, Burçak Bingöl, Monica Bonvici, Louise Bourgeois, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Vajiko Chachkhiani, Gözde İlkin, Liliana Maresca, Lee Miller, Aude Pariset, Sim Chi Yin, Dayanita Singh, Tatiana Trouvé, Tsang Kin-Wah, Andra Ursuta, and Fred Wilson.

The 15th Istanbul Biennial was presented through the museum’s temporary galleries, with Biennial works interspersed within the museum’s Orientalist Painting collection exhibition Intersecting Worlds. The exhibited works explored questions related to family values and structures in a new aesthetic, while also showing a diversity of different artistic positions using a variety of media such as installation, painting and sculpture.

Elmgreen & Dragset, curators of the 15th Istanbul Biennial on “a good neighbour”:
“Your neighbour might be someone who lives quite a different life from yours. And hopefully you, unlike many politicians lately, are not the one who chooses to deal with your fear of otherness by fencing yourself off. The artists in the 15th Istanbul Biennial raise questions about ideas of home, neighbourhood, belonging and co-existence from multiple perspectives. Some of the artworks examine how our domestic living conditions and modes have changed and how our neighbourhoods have transformed, while others focus on how we cope with today’s geopolitical challenges on a micro-level. The Biennial takes its form from the invited artists’ personal or analytical statements: an engaging mixture of hopes and visions, of sadness and indignation, of history and present day.”

Curated by the artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset, 15th Istanbul Biennial brings together a variety of artworks dealing with different notions of home and neighbourhood, the Biennial is taking place at Pera Museum, Istanbul Modern, Galata Greek Primary School, Ark Kültür, an artist collective’s studio, and Küçük Mustafa Paşa Hammam.

 

The General’s Stork <br> Heba Y. Amin

The General’s Stork
Heba Y. Amin

In late 2013, Egypt made worldwide headlines when authorities detained a migratory stork traveling from Israel to Egypt because of an electronic device attached to its body. It was suspected of espionage.

Chosen Families<br>Şükrü Argın,Joseph Massad, Shahrzad Mojab

Chosen Families
Şükrü Argın,Joseph Massad, Shahrzad Mojab

Chosen Families symposium, sets out from the question of ‘What happens when home ceases to be welcoming, when we leave home either voluntarily or involuntarily?’ and trails the quest for different kinds of belongings beyond family as an institution, the impact of experiences of conflict and resolution that emanates from such quests on the levels of society and sociability, as well as the role of affect in political activism.

Borderless and Brazen* <br>Gülşen Aktaş, Aykan Safoğlu

Borderless and Brazen*
Gülşen Aktaş, Aykan Safoğlu

Gülşen and I met randomly at a film screening in Berlin in 2012. The coffee we drank in the foyer marked the beginning of a friendship and life-long collaboration between a gay cis-man of White Turk identity born in the West of Turkey, and a Kurdish cis-woman born in Dersim, who dedicated her life to activism and women’s work in Germany.

The Metropolis of Animals: Neighbours, Companions or Leftovers? <br> Sezai Ozan Zeybek

The Metropolis of Animals: Neighbours, Companions or Leftovers?
Sezai Ozan Zeybek

Places are heterogeneous: A multiplicity of beings co-habit the place: humans, dogs, trees, worms, mushrooms... We are thrown-together and we will be, at different times and speeds, again dispersed. Our social setting is a bubble that draws together forms of life and materials, yet destined to burst out as we move on.

Fred Wilson

Fred Wilson

Wilson’s installation, for the Istanbul Biennial, entitled Afro Kismet, includes a number of handcrafted items related to Ottoman culture and the roles of black people within it. Please join us in this conversation with the artist about the long history of black people in the region – many, if not most, with origins in the Ottoman slave trade – and today refer to themselves as Afro-Turks or Afro-Anatolians.

Video

A Place Called Home

A Place Called Home brings together films depicting the intricate relationships and stories that people have with their homes. Independent of whether they are from America, Europe or Turkey, people share very similar fates.


a good neighbor
36th Istanbul Film Festival

15th edition of the Istanbul Biennial, entitled a good neighbour, focuses on homes, neighbors and neighborhoods as departure points to consider society and co-existence on a larger scale.

A Carriage and a Squat House  <br>Liliana Maresca

A Carriage and a Squat House
Liliana Maresca

Pera Museum, in collaboration with Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), is one of the main venues for this year’s 15th Istanbul Biennial from 16 September to 12 November 2017. Through the biennial, we will be sharing detailed information about the artists and the artworks.

Memory and Now, on Fabrics! <br> Gözde İlkin

Memory and Now, on Fabrics!
Gözde İlkin

Pera Museum, in collaboration with Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), is one of the main venues for this year’s 15th Istanbul Biennial from 16 September to 12 November 2017. Through the biennial, we will be sharing detailed information about the artists and the artworks.

The Rat Tribe Sim Chi Yin

The Rat Tribe Sim Chi Yin

Pera Museum, in collaboration with Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), is one of the main venues for this year’s 15th Istanbul Biennial from 16 September to 12 November 2017.