The jury, consisting of Istanbul Biennial Director Bige Örer, Tate St. Ives Director Anne Barlow, and artists Mike Cooter (London) and Maruša Sagadin (Vienna), decided to award The Grand Prix to Guatemalan artist Alejandro Paz, and the Research Residency Award to Brazilian artist Carlos Monroy.
 

The 15th Istanbul Biennial, organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and sponsored by Koç Holding, ended on Sunday, 12 November. The 15th Istanbul Biennial brought together 150 artworks, including 30 commissions produced for Istanbul, by 56 artists from 32 countries in 6 venues. Further information on the exhibited works and installation views can be reached by clicking here.

The story develops around two seaguls, Opti and Pesi, embarking on a journey to the venues of the 15th Istanbul Biennial and introducing seven works.

Is the numeral multitude of women enough to make an exhibition feminist? Are female artists completely exempt from using a masculine language? We looked at the fourth floor of the Pera Museum to find answers to our questions.

Sim Chi Yin participates in the 15th Istanbul Biennial with her series of photographs called Rat Tribe, documenting the life of Beijing’s migrant workers through their portraits inside the underground shelters they live.

’Most of the works exhibited at the Istanbul Biennial revolve around an idea of uncanniness to destroy the structures or the concepts of ‘home’ and ‘closeness’.’

For the 15th Istanbul Biennial, Young-Jun Tak hung a replica of his former one-room Seoul apartment upside-down on the ceiling of Istanbul Modern and created the piece called The Silence and Eloquence of Objects.

Erkan Özgen’s video Wonderland, which is shown at the Galata Greek Primary School as part of the the Istanbul Biennial, focuses on the story of Mohammed, who had to flee Kobanî in January 2015 due to the ISIL siege of the city.

Rachel Spence, for the Financial Times, emphasises the human-oriented take of the Biennial on political turmoils and its ability to regenerate our faith in the power of art. Click to read the article.

An interview with Candeğer Furtun on the series of legs on show at the biennial and her decades-long art practice.

Take a closer look at a good neighbour. Tickets for hour-long guided tours, sponsored by Koç Holding, are available at Biletix (biletix.com), İKSV (Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building, 5 Sadi Konuralp St. Şişhane, Istanbul) and the Biennial venues.
 

Artists reflect on the theme of the Biennial and their motivations behind their work in short interviews with subtitles available in our Youtube channel. Click to view them in a playlist.

Bringing together five of the artists who have participated in the Turkey Workshop at Paris’ eminent Cité Internationale des Arts Artist Residency Programme, the Flâneuses exhibition at Institut Français is closing on 3 November with a lecture-performance by artist Yasemin Özcan, called "The Heart of the Flaneuse".

I have this natural bond with the theme of the biennial since to me another body has always meant a neighbour. So, bringing different neighbours; different bodies with various dynamics and attitudes together under this dome, inside the holistic structure of this venue is very functional. This piece is going to be wholly produced and exhibited here. As a choreographer who works

Lungiswa Gqunta is taking part in the 15th İstanbul Biennial with an installation she produced by breaking Coca-Cola bottles to form a lawn.

‘Friends and Strangers’ is both an online and a physical multidimensional installation which enables us to witness the stories and urban experiences of three fictional characters with different occupations.

Heba Y. Amin responds to the absurdity that occurs in moments of political strain with her film As Birds Flying (2016) that greets the audience at Galata Greek Primary School, as well as the lecture performance she presented on 15 September, ’The General’s Stork’.

Bringing together a number of handcrafted items related to Ottoman culture and the roles of black people within it in his installation for the Biennial Afro Kismet, on view at the Pera Museum, Wilson was the first guest of the Public Programme with an artist talk he delivered at the auditorium of the Pera Museum on 14 September.

The Biennial exhibitions could be visited at Istanbul Modern, Galata Greek Primary School, Pera Museum, ARK Kültür, Yoğunluk Artist Atelier and Küçük Mustafa Paşa Hammam until 12 November, every day of the week except Monday with free admission. By your personal QR code that you will receive via e-mail after completing the visitor registration form at 15bziyaret.iksv.org, you can visit the biennial at all venues. The Biennial is open on 18 September, Monday.

In order to learn more about visitors’ behaviour and to provide them with further information regarding its other activities, this year, İKSV begins using a QR code system for Biennial visits. You may register for a personal QR code that you will use to visit all the Biennial venues, by filling out the form at 15bziyaret.iksv.org or at registration desks at the Biennial venues.

Ugo Rondinone’s spectecular neon sculpture, Where Do We Go From Here?, exhibited first at the Taksim Square as part of the 6th Istanbul Biennial in 1999, returns to the city to be displayed permanently. With the support of the 2007-2026 Biennial Sponsor Koç Holding, a new sculpture will be offered to the public domain with each Biennial.

Body Drops, a new choreography conceived by Tuğçe Tuna for the Biennial, is at Küçük Mustafa Paşa Hammam on every Saturday for the duration of the Biennial, and on the first Sunday after the public opening.

The Flâneuses exhibition, opening on 13 September, hosts the artists Aslı Çavuşoğlu, İnci Furni, Güneş Terkol, Yasemin Özcan, and İz Öztat & Zişan, who have worked at the Turkey Workshop in the Cité des Arts over different periods, with works all based on “flânerie”.

Two neighbouring, site-specific works that are brought to life at the centre of Istanbul Modern by Yonamine and Latifa Echakhch, welcomes the street aesthetic into the Biennial. The works in dialogue prove that destruction might be as productive as construction. Here is our quick conversation with the artists during the installation.

Choreographer, dance artist, academic, and movement therapist Tuğçe Tuna is among the artists of the 15th Istanbul Biennial with a performance she will be presenting at Küçük Mustafa Paşa Hammam. Let’s hear what the artist has to say about the performance she entitled Body Drops and how it relates to a good neighbour.

The programme of which artist Zeyno Pekünlü serves as a coordinator will enable us to perceive the theme a good neighbour as the neighbourhood of disciplines, with participation of researchers, activists and musicians from different fields. Pekünlü explains the intellectual background of the series of activities that are going to be taking place over the course of two months.

Coordinated by the artist Zeyno Pekünlü, the 15th Istanbul Biennial’s Public Programme features opening and closing symposiums that will host Shahrzad Mojab, Joseph Massad, Massimo de Angelis, Stavros Stavrides, Ayfer Bartu Candan and Şükrü Argın, and a variety of different events aiming biennial visitors of all ages. Please click to view all the events that can be attended with no admission fee.

Teasers of Home Sweet Home, video commission of the 15th Istanbul Biennial to artist Volkan Aslan, are now online.

Alejandro Almanza Pereda on the three-piece work he made for the Istanbul Biennial, one of which has recently been launched at the Pera Museum in anticipation of the Biennial.

The ceramic cameras that Bingöl will install on the façades of over 20 buildings in the most crowded centre of the city are not there to watch, but to be watched.

Alejandro Almanza Pereda is at the Pera Museum with the new piece he has added to to his seminal series Horror Vacui from Istanbul. The series comprise found Romantic paintings covered by lumps of concrete. The work replaced a painting from the Orientalist Painting Collection of the Pera Museum. Two more work from the same series will be exhibited after the opening.

The 15th Istanbul Biennial reveals the participating artists of this year’s edition, which takes place from 16 September to 12 November 2017.

Posters can be obtained, free of charge, from box offices at İKSV, Pera Museum, Istanbul Modern and selected Biletix sales points.

Every Monday, writers, editors, curators, thinkers write about a good neighbour on the special section dedicated to the 15th Istanbul Biennial in the online newspaper, T24, available only in Turkish.

The 15th Istanbul Biennial will be located in the heart of Istanbul, and can be visited free of charge at six nearby venues within walking distance.

Elmgreen & Dragset talk about the 15th Istanbul Biennial in a conversation held by The Biennial Foundation at Venice.

In anticipation of the exhibition, the 15th Istanbul Biennial launched an International Billboard Project to share the theme of a good neighbour in different cities around the world.

Biennial Special Tickets reward you as a supporter of the exhibition with special opportunities and benefits.