Büyükada, 18 August 2014. Photo © Francis Alÿs
THE 14TH ISTANBUL BIENNIAL, SALTWATER,
OPENS TO THE PUBLIC ON 5 SEPTEMBER 2015
OVER 1,500 ARTWORKS IN 36 VENUES
CAN BE SEEN UNTIL 1 NOVEMBER
The 14th Istanbul Biennial SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms, organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) opens to the public on
5 September 2015. The biennial, drafted by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev with a number of alliances, presents over 1,500 artworks by over 80 participants from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and North America. The biennial will be open until 1 November 2015.
Encompassing 36 venues on the European and Asian sides of the Bosphorus, SALTWATER takes place in museums as well as temporary spaces of habitation on land and on sea such as boats, hotels, former banks, garages, gardens, schools, shops and private homes.
14th Istanbul Biennial Media Conference
The media conference of the 14th Istanbul Biennial was held at the Italian High School on Wednesday, 2 September. İKSV Chairman Bülent Eczacıbaşı and Istanbul Biennial Director Bige Örer delivered brief opening speeches. The media conference continued with the speech of Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, draftsperson of the 14th Istanbul Biennial, providing detailed information regarding the biennial. Members of the biennial team were also present on stage during the conference.
A mini-concert by biennial artists; AdriánVillar Rojas, Liam Gillick, Taner Ceylan, and Theaster Gates followed the speeches.
The 14th Istanbul Biennial sponsor Koç Holding was represented by Chairman Mustafa V. Koç at the media conference.
The 14th Istanbul Biennial’s opening week will host nearly 5,000 guests from the international art scene, including critics, curators, museum and gallery directors, and media.
SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev: “This citywide exhibition on the Bosphorus hovers around a material– salt water –and the contrasting images of knots and of waves. It looks for where to draw the line, to withdraw, to draw upon, and to draw out. It does so offshore, on the flat surfaces of our devices with our fingertips, but also in the depths, underwater, before the enfolded encoding unfolds.
It considers different frequencies and patterns of waves, the currents and densities of water, both visible and invisible that poetically and politically shape and transform the world. There are arrested movements that suspend time (the knots of human transport across seas and oceans, the knots of war, of labour, of ethnic cleansing) and there are repetitive and dispersive movements like waves (waves of uprisings, waves of ‘jouissance’, electro-magnetic waves). There are literal waves of water, but also waves of people, of emotion and memory. It is through the identification of waves that we acknowledge patterns –underwater patterns of water, or patterns of wind. Perhaps a wave is simply time –the feeling of a difference between its high and low points able to mark the experience of time, and thus of space, and thus of life. With and through art, we mourn, commemorate, denounce, try to heal, and we commit ourselves to the possibility of joy and vitality, of many communities that have co-inhabited this space, leaping from form to flourishing life.”
14th Istanbul Biennial Venues
Displayed in the European and Asian sides of the Bosphorus, SALTWATER takes place in museums as well as temporary spaces of habitation on land and on sea such as boats, hotels, former banks, garages, gardens, schools, shops and private houses. There are venues where the visitors will encounter a group exhibition, such as Istanbul Modern, ARTER, the Italian High School, and the Galata Greek Primary School, but most locations host the work of a single artist or artist collective.
Exhibition venues at the Galata-Tophane-Beyoğlu route are: SALT Galata, Vault Karaköy The House Hotel, Kasa Galeri, Galata Greek Primary School, Istanbul Modern, a floating boat on Bosphorus, DEPO, two garages on Boğazkesen Street and Çukurcuma Street and a store on Boğazkesen Street, the Museum of Innocence, the Italian High School, one of three fictional venues of the biennial French Orphanage, The House Hotel Galatasaray, a house on Bostanbaşı Street, Cezayir building, another fictional venue of the biennial Casa Garibaldi, ARTER, once the Anatolian Passage and now a shoe store FLO Building, Pera Museum, a room in the Adahan Hotel and the Adahan Cistern.
Kabataş-Kadıköy-Büyükada route includes Tunca Subaşı & Çağrı Saray studio in Yeldeğirmeni, Kaptan Paşa Seabus, Büyükada Public Library, Splendid Palas, Rizzo Palace, Mizzi Mansion, Çankaya 57, and Trotsky House in Büyükada, and also Sivriada.
The venues in Şişli-the Old City-the Northern Bosphorus route are: Hrant Dink FoundationandAgos as well asHrant Dink Foundation and Agos – Centre for Parrhesia, Küçük Mustafa Paşa Hammam, Rumeli Feneri, and another fictional venue of the biennial Riva Beach.
Finally, a provisional biennial venue will be Kastellorizo, a Greek island two kilometres away from the Turkish coast. The weeklong project in collaboration with the Fiorucci Art Trust titled “The violent No! of the sun burns the forehead of hills. Sand fleas arrive from salt lake and most of the theatres close” will take place there from 7 to 13 September 2015.
14th Istanbul Biennial Participants and Projects
The exhibition presents over 1,500 artworks, including commissions by artists as well as other materials from the history of oceanography, environmental studies, marine archaeology, Art Nouveau, neuroscience, physics, mathematics and theosophy, and some crystals that Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev gathered with a friend at Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty on the Great Salt Lake in early 2015.
Works at the biennial range historically from an 1870 painting of waves by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who received a Nobel prize in 1906 for discovering the neuron, to the ground-breaking abstract Thought Forms of Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater (1901-1905), a new work by Füsun Onur where a poem is heard on a moving boat, up to a cultural meeting point between Chicago and Istanbul by Theaster Gates.
Amongst the most evident artistic projects to explore irregular wave patterns and organic growth is the work of Christine Taylor Patten, a series of 1,000 tiny one-inch square drawings titled ‘micros’ with minimal materials such as a crow-quill pen and black ink on paper. Anna Boghiguian’s The Salt Traders, a grand, sculptural installation of old sails, paintings, drawings, fragments of a boat and sound recordings, Cevdet Erek’s new installation A Room of Rhythms – Otopark in an old car park built in 1940 in Tophane, the last episode of Wael Shawky’s epic video trilogy, CabaretCrusades:TheSecretsofKarbala, that will include glimpses of the Battle ofKarbala, a sculptural installation of crates from which art objects seem to have escaped, referring to the need for art to be freed from its hoarding in the age of creative capitalism by Walid Raad in a former bank vault on Bankalar Street, Kasa Galeri, William Kentridge’s new multi-channel video and sculptural installation, inspired by the presence and exile of Leon Trotsky on Büyükada island in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Adrián Villar Rojas who creates monumental sculptures emplaced in the sea by the shore of the Trotsky House in Büyükada, and Pierre Huyghe’s Abyssal Plain, a long-term underwater project.
Conversations between different fields of knowledge occur in a long, narrow space that Carolyn Christov Bakargiev calls the Channel, where works range from those by oceanographer Emin Özsoy, and Jeffrey Peakall to D’Aronco’s drawings and drawings of knots made by Jacques Lacan in the 1970’s, alongside the ‘knotty’ paintings of Brazilian artist Frans Krajcberg, as well as a selection of late nineteenth- century Art Nouveauvasesby ÉmileGalléand drawings by Patrick Blancfor his vertical gardens will be displayed.
The biennial speaks about the transformative agency and potential that art can have, its ‘use-ability’, through the struggles for Aboriginal rights of the Yolngu people of North-east Arnhem Land in Queensland, and how their struggles have resulted in laws being changed and rights being acknowledged throughout Australia. A selection of Yirrkala drawings including a colourful series of drawings on brown paper made in 1947, the Bark Petitions of 1963, and the Saltwater Paintings of 1998–2008, are displayed.
The 14th Istanbul Biennial is drafted by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. Interlocutors and alliances include Anna Boghiguian, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Cevdet Erek, Bracha L. Ettinger, Pierre Huyghe, Emre Hüner, William Irvine, William Kentridge, Marcos Lutyens, Chus Martínez, Füsun Onur, Emin Özsoy, Griselda Pollock, Michael Rakowitz, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran and Elvan Zabunyan.
The list of 14th Istanbul Biennial participants can be found in the press kit.
14th Istanbul Biennial Events
SALTWATER: Speech Acts and Forms of Discourse
Speech Acts and Forms of Discourse offers opportunities for public engagement with artists, scientists, curators, philosophers, and other cultural activists through round table discussions, seminars, oral presentations, conversations with the audience, group readings, guided tours, and programs for children. Detailed programme of Speech Acts and Forms of Discourse can be found at 14b.iksv.org.
Film Programme
The film programme will be held free of charge throughout the biennial at the Istanbul Modern Cinema. Feature films are programmed by Müge Turan and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, films and artists’ works are paired by James Richards. This programme is conceived as a series of pairings between feature films and artists' films and videos around four themes: Eco-Fi, Subaquatic, Survival, and Life by the Shore.
There will be video screenings from 2 September on and feature films from 10 September on in the programme, which encompasses a wide range from silent movies to documentaries and from box office busters to the classics of the European and American movies.
As part of the programme, biennial participants’ films such as, Tacita Dean’s JG (2013), Guido Wan Der Werve’s Nummer Veertien, home (2012) and also Marguerite Duras’s L’homme Atlantique, 1981 can be watched. The full film programme can be found at 14b.iksv.org.
Education Programme for Children and Youth
Young visitors to the biennial will gain an enhanced understanding of contemporary art and exhibitions, thanks to the Education Programme for Children and Youth realised with the support of Koç Holding and cooperation of Pace Children’s Art Center. The biennial is pleased to present a special programme for the duration of the exhibition that is intended to help them get acquainted with basic artistic terms and concepts. While discovering SALTWATER through trips to various venues, they will talk about and put into practice what they have learned.
Young visitors to the biennial will gain an enhanced understanding of contemporary art and exhibitions, thanks to a project realised with the cooperation of Pace Children’s Art Centre. The biennial is pleased to offer a special programme for the duration of the exhibition that is intended to help them get acquainted with basic artistic terms and concepts. While discovering SALTWATER through journeys to various venues, they will talk about and put into practice what they have learned.
This special youth educational programme to be held free of charge for children and young people with between ages 8 and 18 will be held throughout the biennial from 5 September until 1 November. The workshops will take place in Büyükada between 5 and 13 September, every day of the week, each day in two sessions, and in Galata Greek Primary School between 14 September and 1 November, every day except Mondays, each day in three sessions. Since the sessions can accommodate a maximum of 25 children, advance reservations are advised via or +90(212) 334 07 45 and +90(549) 795 14 32 .
14th Istanbul Biennial mobile app
Visitors will get detailed information about more than 1,500 works by over 80 participants as well as directions and public transport for accessing the venues of the 14th Istanbul Biennial with the İKSV Mobil app powered by
Vodafone Red. The free app is available on the App Store and Google Play and the biennial section will be
accessible as of 2 September.
Visitor Information
The biennial venues are open 10.00–18.00 every day except Mondays. All venues will be open on Monday, 7 September during the opening week.
On Thursdays, Istanbul Modern will be open until 20.00 and the Museum of Innocence until 21.00.
Closed on Sundays and Mondays, SALT Galata can be visited from 10.00–20.00, Tuesday to Saturday. It will be open on Sunday, 6 September during the opening week.
Hotel Splendid Palace opens at 10.00 during the opening week and at 11.00 for the rest of the biennial.
Pera Museum opens at 12.00 every Sunday.
Tunca Subaşı & Çağrı Saray Studio is open to the public only on weekends between 12.00 and 18.00, but can be visited by appointment on weekdays except for Mondays. For an appointment, call +90 (549) 781 85 16 one day before arrival.
Programme for Hrant Dink Foundation and Agos – Centre for Parrhesia will be announced later on the biennial web: 14b.iksv.org
All venues will be closed on 24 September due to national holiday. As of the 2ndday of holiday (between25–27 September)İstanbul Modern, Pera Museum, ARTER and the Museum of Innocence opens while other venues remain closed.
Admission to the 14th Istanbul Biennial is free of charge. There is an entrance fee to visit the Museum of Innocence.
14th Istanbul Biennial Guided Tours
Guided tours of the 14th Istanbul Biennial sponsored by Koç Holding will be held on 4 different routes.
Büyükada: Kaptan Paşa Sea Bus, Büyükada Public Library, Hotel Splendid Palace, Rizzo Palace,
Mizzi Mansion, Çankaya 57, Trotsky House
Tuesday–Sunday; 11.00 and 14.00 Meeting point: Hotel Splendid Palace
Beyoğlu 1: ARTER, Pera Museum, ADAHAN Hotel and Cistern, SALT Galata, Vault Karaköy The House
Hotel, Kasa Galeri
Tuesday–Sunday; 11.00 and 14.00 Meeting point: ARTER
Beyoğlu 2: Cezayir, House (Bostanbaşı St. No. 30), The Hotel Galatasaray, Garage (Çukurcuma St.
No. 108/A), Store (Boğazkesen Cad. No. 106), The Italian High School, DEPO
Tuesday–Sunday; 11.00 and 14.00 Meeting point: Cezayir
Karaköy: Guided tours will be held regularly at Istanbul Modern and Galata Greek Primary School.
Tuesday–Sunday; 11.00, 14.00 and 16.00
Tickets can be purchased at booths at Istanbul Modern, Galata Greek Primary School, ARTER and Hotel
Splendid Palace, or via Biletix (includes service fees) and at the İKSV main box office (everyday between 10.00 and 18.00, except Sundays) at a price of 25 TL (10 TL for students) and 55 TL (25 TL for students) for combined guided tours.