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Realized with a generous contribution by a Japanese
Tobacco Company, curated by the New York based Dan
Cameron, launched in Istanbul: the 8th
International Art Biennial in Turkey. What happens when
a curator from a city, where smoking is strictly forbidden, presents
an international art exhibition under the umbrella of an Asian tobacco
corporation in a country, where smoking is still a vast habit.
The choice of an American based curator brought in a quite lot of
visitors, more then the past did with its curators from Japan or Swiss;
on the first look, a positive effect based on the fond of travel and
a critical art interest in the periphery and in cultural diversity;
on the second view, a result of the sponsors activities bringing in
more then several hundred art critics and journalists mostly from
the US and Europe; they have to forward a copy of an article about
the Biennial which will facilitate their accreditation for the next
one.-
Beside becoming a commercial and prestigious project - as most of
today’s art biennials in the world did - it overturns its long
lasting intention being the criss-cross point of Occident and Orient,
between West and East, between Europe and Asia; the curator - nominated
after September 11 - takes the viewpoint of a critic towards the global
hegemony and brutal power abuse in the name of the nation he comes
from; the exhibitions title Poetic Justice expresses
this and ask what is the purpose of art within today’s
conflicted and fragmented societies. Art pieces here
are dedicated to simply present a far more disturbing reality than
most are willing to accept.
The show itself becomes a space for subversive artistic tendencies
in the global frame; the subversive artist as TerroRealist
- described in one of the catalogues accompanying texts by the artist
Kendell
Geers from Johannesburg; Kendell Geers himself enfant
terrible and TerroRealist (he pissed into Duchamp's urinal in the
Palazzo Grassi in Venice); his text takes in consideration that
beyond the images of the television screens and girly magazines lies
another reality – a world of change, chaos, revolution, dissent,
AIDS, jihads, civil war and culture clashes. In this
light today’s generation of artists who grew up in the margins
and ghettos have learnt lessons from the Freedom Fighters of the past
decades. This artist’s work is neither neutral nor innocent,
where luxury is built upon sweatshops and oil wars: TerroRealism.
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For example Ozawa
Tsuyoshi from Tokyo takes portraits from people holding
a gun shaped by their recommended dishes of that region. After the
shooting the artist have a party together with the portrayed person
using the same ingredients. The project, which places emphasis on
the entire process, involves people in various locations. The
fact that the same material can be transformed from a gesture of conflict
into an opportunity for dialogue shows that enmity and friendship
represent tow sides, and that both can be generated
by a simple difference in interpretation.
The Istanbul/New York based art group xurban.net
shows more explicit how artist’s knowledge and experience of
reality is dragged into the context of art. Mostly an online
based collective dedicated to art and politics - here they
carried out a site-specific project, which demonstrates the site effect
of the Iraq war on the Turkish economy and living situation in the
southeast of Turkey. In the exhibition they show large-scale photos
of a landscape packed with thousands of trucks. Today dirty, damaged,
abandoned, in former days used by Turks to smuggle oil from Baghdad
into Turkey with the help of the Kurds. The esthetical attraction
of the photos don’t let forget someone how this change effects
the whole area.
Emily
Jacir, artist from Palestine, worked tow years on her
project Where We are From. She interrogated 30 people
from Palestine which are not allowed to travel to their homeland because
of regulations by the Israelian government. The interrogated persons
could articulate one wish what Emily Jacir should do for them at their
home villages. For example one wanted her to travel to his village
and take pictures from his relatives, he didn’t see for three
years. During the following tow years the artist traveled to 30 places
in Palestine and did what the interrogated people whished from her.
In the exhibition she presents photos from this events together with
the written wishes. Her art will reject the idea of the forbidden
place and marks the dislocation of the body.
In the accompanying catalogue text by Arundhati
Roy The Reincarnation of Rumpelstiltskin
– taken from her last book Power Politics –
this writer and actionist from India discusses the privatisation of
her country's power sector and the politics of writing. Here, powerful
governments and their corporations become the modern Rumpelstiltskin,
the potentate, powerful, pitiless and armed to the teeth. His
realm is raw capital, his conquest emerging markets, his prayers profit,
his borders limitless, his weapons nuclear. Arundhati
Roy first gained international recognition in 1997 with her first
and only work of fiction to date The God of Small Things.
Arundhati Roy writes about civil societies that are adversely affected
by the world's most powerful governments and corporations. The choice
of this text discusses the main focus of the whole Biennial show.
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As articulated by the artist Tony
Feher for a wide range of artists: this Biennial is self
reflecting, subtle, challenges evoking and sensitive concerning violation.
Born in Corpus Christi, Texas – he is not the God of small Things
but The Artist of Small Things – he stays in
line with his creation of something from nothing and shows perfect
how artistic activities can be different than laboring to serve the
interests of capital, or war, or the state: in the Aya Sofia –
one of the seven world wonder, today Museum which hosted before one
after another the Christian and the Islamic religion – Tony
Feher adheres blue crepe paper in small stripes to the window glasses;
creating a semi transparent blue light, consistently evocative while
hovering at the borderline of immateriality and hardly noticed as
piece of art by the visitors.
The magnificent sponsorship made it possible to engage Marcos
Corrales Lantero, architect from Spain. He transformed the
Antrepo – a former warehouse of the Istanbul
harbor and the main exhibition hall – into a dynamic showcase
for new art. As Dan Cameron described, this job required
characteristics that are not always at the forefront of exhibition
design: the ability to create a flowing space that don’t call
attention to itself and the capacity to respond sensitively to the
artist needs. He has achieved a harmonious flow between
spaces and artists’ projects throughout the Antrepo, and his
biggest innovation is the creation of the projection cells.
Partly inspired by the structural role played by circular shapes in
Islamic architecture, the cells became a way to develop individual
spaces that are inviting and functional. The large number of light
and video installations – projects which require dark viewing
conditions - fill these different spiral cells individually without
disturbing each other - even with significant audio content - and
also without resorting to the boring convention of a closed box as
seen this year in Venice. He creates an innovative exhibition space
with marvelous invention.
September - 2003 |
updated
March 2004
