12th Istanbul Biennial
The 2011 Istanbul Biennial could just as well have taken place at the Istanbul Modern, its neighbouring institution within the Antrepo warehouse compound in the city’s Tophane district. This is a biennial that knowingly does not want to behave like one. It instead acts, beguilingly, as if the Biennial were a museum exhibition, estranging both at once. The opening curatorial essay in the Biennial companion guide sums it all up: ‘The 12th Istanbul Biennial advocates for a renewed attention to the importance of the exhibition itself by privileging the display and juxtaposition of artworks in one central location’. It is a slightly ironic gesture, given that the art biennial is in itself an alternative exhibition model that sought to distinguish itself from museum set ups and ideologies, and so falling back into a museal visage would not be its most desirable outcome.
This edition of the Biennial, co-curated by the Brazilian independent curator Adriano Pedrosa and the Costa Rican-born Jens Hoffmann, who is Director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco, is in its small way wanting to be a game-changer. It is conscious of the history of biennials and their shortcomings, yet wants still to be discernible as one and so finds a way to critique it whilst being complicit in the act. The curatorial gambit that they have resorted to is rather unexpected; taking the work (and life) of the late Cuban-American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996) as their departure point, the curators latched onto Gonzalez-Torres’s series of ‘Untitled’ works and named the Biennial in the same fashion, alluding to the usual chestnut of affording changeable meanings over time and space to an activated audience... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline
Edgardo Aragorn, Family effects, 2007-09. HD video, 25:35mins. Courtesy the artist.
Kris Martin, Obussen II, 2010. 700 found objects, dimensions variable. Courtesy Sies+Höke, Düsseldorf, Germany. Photography Achim Kukulies.
