b. 1980, Cairo, Egypt
lives in Berlin, Germany

Heba Y. Amin’s film As Birds Flying (2016) responds to the absurdity that occurs in moments of political strain. The film is constructed out of found drone footage of savannas and wetlands, including settlements in Galilee. The soundtrack contains sequences of dialogue reconstructed from Adel Imam’s film Birds of Darkness (1995), which tells the story of religious and secular political candidates in Egypt. The film’s footage of birds flocking or perched alone resonates with contemporary political tensions between individualism and crowds, and questions whether birds of a feather really do flock together.

As Birds Flying, 2016
Video still

Exhibited works

As Birds Flying, 2016
Single-channel video, 6:50 min.

Courtesy of the artist
Presented with the support of Zilberman Gallery and Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen

b. 1961, New Bedford, Massachusetts, USA
lives in New York, NY, USA

The works of Mark Dion interrogate the conventions of scientific display. Borrowing from the aesthetics, visual techniques and conventions of ecological or natural-history museums, Dion performs and presents his research in order to foreground the human construction of knowledge, history and the natural world. Urban ecosystems have long been of interest to Dion, and for his contribution to the Biennial, he collaborated with local researchers, biologists, divers and artists to find and document local species of plants and marine life. Recorded in the form of watercolours, and displayed in two custom-made cabinets that can be opened and closed by the audience, the work becomes a bio-portrait of a particular time period in Istanbul. Pointing to the resolute tenacity of life in polluted urban areas and their environs, Dion takes Istanbul itself as a paradigmatic case of urban sprawl – a complex and rich natural environment in which flora and fauna thrive under the treacherous conditions of a densely populated city.

Galata Greek Primary School, installation view.
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

The Resilient Marine Life of Istanbul, 2017
The Persistent Weeds of Istanbul, 2017

Wooden cabinet, watercolour drawings

In collaboration with Burak Dak, Işık Güner, Reysi Kamhi, Dana Sherwood, Jana Weaver, Bryan M. Wilson

Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (New York)
Produced and presented with the support of Tansa Mermerci Ekşioğlu.

b. 1975, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
lives in New York, NY, USA

b. 1976, Dayton, Ohio, USA
lives in New York, NY, USA

Every society has its youth cultures. Within them, social communities and self-expression are closely linked, manifested through highly specific recreational activities, artistic styles, sports, commodities, slang and clothing. Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe’s project Scenario in the Shade (2015–17) is an architectural and cinematic articulation of fictional youth cultures in California, a world of accelerated subcultural development, as interpreted through the mise-en-scène of a cluster of underground habitats.

The multi-space installation take as its point of departure the fictional region described by futurist Herman Kahn in his 1967 book The Year 2000. Kahn speculated that the cities of San Diego and San Francisco along the California coast would eventually grow into a single metropolis, which he called ‘San San’.

Scenario in the Shade, 2015–17, detail
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Scenario in the Shade, 2015–17
Mixed-media installation

The San San Trilogy, 2014–16
Single-channel video, 86:00 min.

Courtesy of the artists and Marlborough Contemporary

b. 1985, London, UK
lives in Berlin, Germany

It is a paradoxical truism that the only constant is change itself. How might this notion of continuity-in-change relate to cultural difference? Employing primarily sculpture, Kasia Fudakowski’s works draw upon the paradoxes of cultural history to playfully assert typologies, archetypes and stereotypes of genders, nations and ethnic legacies. These notions of difference are employed and subverted in order to point out the unexpected continuities and interdependencies among neighbouring individuals, histories and identities.
Difference becomes commonality in Fudakowski’s work Continuouslessness (2011–17). For this piece, she has constructed a series of ten panels, referencing ‘characters’ like ‘The Gender-Bender’ and ‘The (Liquid) Host/ess’, that stand side by side in a room, forming a screen or wall divider. Continuouslessness suggests a sense of constancy through change and presents a functioning – yet incongruous – interlinked union of different parts.

Continuouslessness, 2011–17,
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Continuouslessness, 2011–17
Mixed-media installation

Courtesy of the artist and ChertLüdde (Berlin)
Produced with the support of Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
Presented with the support of the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen and the British Council.

b. 1976, Bucaramanga, Colombia
lives in Bergen, Norway and Copenhagen, Denmark

Pedro Goméz-Egaña’s work examines the dual notions of ‘underground’ space as a site for containment and freedom alike. In his performance-driven installation Domain of Things (2017), he interprets underground space as a site of refuge, yet also activity and pleasure, giving life to the space above. As individuals lie inside a wheeled basement structure on rails, slowly pushing and pulling, domestic space comes to resemble a machine. As the performers activate the machinery underneath, the ‘home’ above moves too – becoming fractured, disintegrating and re-forming itself.

Domain of Things, 2017,
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Domain of Things, 2017
Metal structure, wooden panels, furniture, sound, performance

Courtesy of the artist
Produced with the support of Arts Council Norway, Office for Contemporary Art Norway, City of Bergen Norway, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen and BIT Teatergarasjen.

With the collaboration of Performistanbul artists

Technical Director
Bart Callebaut

Advisors
Bojana Bauer
John Clifford Burns

Performers
Aslı Dinç
Ata Doğruel
Gülhatun Yıldırım
Leman Darıcıoğlu
Ebru Sargın
Özlem Ünlü
Batu Bozoğlu

Music
Henri Dutilleux, concerto for cello and orchestra “Tout en Monde Lointain”: IV. Miroirs
Linda Perhacs, Chimacum Rain

b. 1990, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
lives in Cape Town, South Africa

The sculptures of Lungiswa Gqunta investigate the ongoing and tense relationships surrounding race, architecture, dispossession and capitalism. They employ commonly found domestic objects, and are personal examinations of historical continuities and injustices that persist within post-Apartheid South Africa. In Lawn 1 (2016/17), she creates a ‘lawn’ out of broken Coca-Cola bottles. In apartheid South Africa, only affluent whites had lawns, which were tied to their prosperity and notions of domesticity, security and racial privilege. Upturned, broken bottles are placed on garden fences to deter outsiders. For Gqunta, who grew up in one of South Africa’s biggest townships, this work symbolises the lawns of her childhood.

Lawn 1, 2016/17
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Lawn 1, 2016/17
Wood, 3168 broken Coca Cola glass bottles, petrol, ink

Courtesy of the artist

b. 1981, Billings, Montana, USA
lives in Ferndale, Washington, USA

Andrea Joyce Heimer’s paintings are based on her personal memories of growing up in Great Falls, Montana, US in the 80s and 90s.

The Johnson Boys Used To Set Off Fireworks In Their Mother’s Home, Which Was Too Nice For Them, While We, Who Were Too Nice For The Johnson Boys, Pined Over Them Fiercely From Afar. They Didn’t Know We Existed., 2017
Photo by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery

Exhibited works

In The Summer Of 1989 Mr. McManus Cut Down A Rosebush That Was Growing Directly On The Border Between The McManus’s Back Yard And The Black’s Back Yard. The Resulting Donnybrook Was The Most Brutal Things Us Kids Had Ever Seen In Real Life. Years Later I Figured Out The Fight Wasn’t Really About Roses., 2013

Acrylic and pencil on board
Courtesy of the artist
Collection Aaron Zulpo
Presented with the support of Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York).

On Tuesday, July 1, 1980, In Billings, Montana, Which Is In The Southern Quadrant Of The State, It Was 70 Degrees Which Is Hot Enough To Make Most People Stay Inside In The Afternoon Except Maybe Kids, And Being Close To The Fourth Of July The Kids Would Have Been Lighting Fireworks And Watching Them Pop And Sizzle Into The Big Blue Sky Over The Peaks Of The Bighorn Mountains Like Man-Made Comets Or Magic Spells. Just South Of Town The Heat Would Have Left Two Kids Looking For A Shady Place To Kiss, Which Would Lead Them To Pictograph Cave, A Sacred Site Excavated By Archaeologists In The 1930’s Where 106 Pictographs Were Found, Some As Old As 2000 Years, Whose Origins Still Leave Everyone Guessing Because Generations Of Native Americans Have Added Onto The Existing Pictures Again And Again So That The Stories Of Old Battles Intersect With The New, Confusing History, And Maybe It Was These Things A Slight Girl With Green Eyes And Straw-Colored Hair Who Liked To Draw And Who Was Between Her Eighth And Ninth Grade Year, Was Thinking Of While She Studied A Horse-Shaped Pictograph Under A Boy Who Was A Bit Older, With Brown Hair And Eyes And Who Liked Cars, Who Burst Inside The Girl, Unleashing Bits Of Things And Other Things That Would Become Me, Already Unwanted. Or Maybe The Girl Was Thinking Of The Little Bighorn Monument Where They Had Guzzled Wine Coolers Earlier While Treading The Same Ground Where General George Armstrong Custer Breathed His Last Wicked Breath At The Hands Of Brave Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, And Arapaho Warriors Whose Ghosts The Girl Thought She Could Sense Snaking Through The Bear Grass And Old Graves, And Maybe It Is Because Of These Things That Even Now, 36 Years Later, I Love Horses And Justness And Fireworks And Stories., 2017

Acrylic and pencil on panel
Courtesy of the artist
Collection Jennifer Ley & Kit Skarstrom
Presented with the support of Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York).

Bored Girls In Painting Class., 2016

Acrylic and pencil on panel
Courtesy of the artist
Collection Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea

On Tuesday, March 24, 1981, In Billings, Montana, Which Is Nicknamed The Magic City For Its Rapid Growth As A Young Railroad Town In 1882, News Reports Said That An Earthquake Had Hit New Zealand Which Was Hardly Any Consequence At All In The Western United States Except For Maybe The Slightest Tremor Felt Under The Feet, More Of A Shiver Than A Shake, Imperceptible To Most Humans But Noticed By The Sensitive Beasts Of The Nearby Pryor Mountains Mustang Herd, A Group Of Wild Horses Deemed, Because Of Their Unique Genetic Makeup, The Most Significant Wild Horse Herd Remaining In The United States. This Day, In A Courtroom Downtown, A Judge Was Deciding A Very Large Case In Which The Crow Tribe Of Montana Sought To Ban Hunting And Fishing Within Its Reservation By Anyone Who Was Not A Member Of The Tribe, Citing Its Purported Ownership Of The Bed Of The Bighorn River, On Treaties Which Created Its Reservation, And On Its Inherent Power As A Sovereign, But The Judge Was Currently Ruling, With Coffee On His Breath, That This Was Not To Be, And That Hunting And Fishing Areas Of The Crow Reservation Would Continue To Be Open To Anyone, Stating The Treaties Of 1851 And 1868 Did Not Convey Ownership Of The Riverbed To The Crow Tribe, And He Said This In A Voice As Hollow As The Halls In Which They Sat, The Judge And Members Of The Crow Tribe. It Was Noon, And Across Town A Slight Girl With Green Eyes And Straw-Colored Hair Writhed In Pain As A Baby Girl Struggled Out Of Her, Me, And She Knew What I Didn’t Know Yet Because How Could I, That Even As The Doctor Readied The Blade To Slice The Umbilical Cord, That A Man Outside Check His Watch And Waited To Transport Me Somewhere Else, I Don’t Know Where, To Be Adopted To Someone Else. To Move On From This I Will Now Talk About The Moon That Night And How It Was A Waning Gibbous Moon, Meaning 85 Percent Of It Was Illuminated, The Moon Of Demeter, Which Traditionally Marks A Harvest Sacrifice To The Earth Mother, A Moon In Which Its Followers Are Advised To Disconnect From Unwanted Situations, Banish What Shouldn’t Be There, And Remove Obstacles. A Sad Day On Many Fronts., 2017

Acrylic and pencil on panel
Courtesy of the artist
Collection Michael Zamsky
Presented with the support of Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York).

My Sister’s Bush Was Glorious And Full And The Color Of Campfire Flames While Mine, Still Struggling Through Puberty, Was Patchy And Mousy And In Her Presence I Felt Like An Unfinished Drawing., 2016

Acrylic and pencil on panel
Courtesy of the artist
Collection Hometown Gallery
Presented with the support of Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York).

The Johnson Boys Used To Set Off Fireworks In Their Mother’s Home, Which Was Too Nice For Them, While We, Who Were Too Nice For The Johnson Boys, Pined Over Them Fiercely From Afar. They Didn’t Know We Existed., 2017

Acrylic and pencil on paper
Courtesy of the artist and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery
Collection Nina Hale
Presented with the support of Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York).

The Bad Boys Hung Around The Baseball Diamond Being Dangerous And Irresistible., 2014

Acrylic and pencil on wood
Courtesy of the artist
Collection Harvey Fierstein
Presented with the support of Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York).

Mr. Leland Had Served In The Military For A Time And When He Came Back My Parents Said He Was A Little Off. Everything Had To Be Perfect, From The Way The Lawn Was Cut To How Mrs. Leland Shaved Her Legs. He Almost Always Chewed Cinnamon Gum And We Were Terrified Of Him., 2012–14

Acrylic and pencil on wood
Courtesy of the artist
Collection Lindsay Gallery (Columbus, OH)
Presented with the support of Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York).

In Our House And Others I Knew, Redecorating Was A Way To Force Change Without Really Changing Anything At All., 2014

Acyrlic and pencil on wood
Courtesy of the artist
Collection Mara Baldwin and Sara Hennes
Presented with the support of Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York).

It Must Have Been Around 1992 When A Rare Bird Built Its Nest In The Park Across The Street From My Parent’s House And The Hunter A Few Houses Down Wanted To Slay It And The Boys Named Chris And Colin, Whom I Disliked, Wanted To Steal Its Eggs To Hatch Under Their Pillows, And The Beautiful Girl Named Mandy Wanted To Pluck Its Feathers For Her Hair, And I Wanted To Be It, The Bird, Impermanent And Candy-Colored And Wanted By All., 2017

Acrylic and pencil on panel
Courtesy of the artist and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery
Presented with the support of Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York).

The Failed Panty Raid of 1993., 2017

Acrylic and pencil on paper
Courtesy of the artist
Collection Nina Hale
Presented with the support of Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York).

I Envy Those Who Are Not Afraid To Be Alone, And Who Are Not Afraid Of The Dark Or Of The Moon Spilling Over Them Or Of Robbers Or Ghosts Or Silence., 2017

Acrylic and pencil on panel
Courtesy of the artist
Collection Jennifer Ley & Kit Skarstrom
Presented with the support of Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York).

At The Very Same Time Each Evening The Family Down The Road Prays Before They Eat Dinner In Front Of A Big Picture Window And When I Am Feeling Especially Small I Am Jealous Of Their Certainty And Of The Sturdy Wooden Chairs Holding Each Of Them In Place., 2016

Acrylic and pencil on panel
Courtesy of the artist
Collection Emma Allen & Alex Allenchey
Presented with the support of Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York).

If You’re Okay Then I’m Okay And We Can Do This Until We’re Very Old., 2012–14

Acrylic and pencil on wood
Courtesy of the artist
Collection Lisa Waltuch & Jon Zeitlin
Presented with the support of Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York).

b. 1985, Edinburgh, Scotland
lives in London, UK

b. 1984, Bedford, UK
lives in London, UK

According to economists, young people today are the first generation in recent history to be less financially stable than their parents. Such realities are felt by many in urban centres, where growing wealth disparities mean a fight for small but expensive living quarters. For many young city-dwellers – especially those in the creative classes – work is often intermittent and unstable, and they are forced to live in relative discomfort, in not yet gentrified areas of town, with little prospect of a way up or out.

Morag Keil and Georgie Nettell’s film The Fascism of Everyday Life (2016) contrasts the expectations of city life as an artist in London with the realities of cramped living conditions where one must protect one’s space from one’s housemates.

At home, where the smell of steamed cabbage does not bother, where it’s just me below my father, 2017
Video still

Exhibited works

The Fascism of Everyday Life, 2016
Single-channel HD video, 11:44 min.

Courtesy of the artists and Project Native Informant
Presented with the support of the British Council.

b. 1952, Berlin, Germany
lives in Munich, Germany

Olaf Metzel’s Sammelstelle (transl. “collecting point”) (1992/2017) is a self-enclosed spatial installation constructed out of galvanised, corrugated iron – a material commonly used for roofs in temporary, rural or military constructions, and also often utilised in low-income countries due to its inexpensiveness and ease of assembly. When making the first version of the work in 1992, Metzel intended it as an evocation of the realities of displacement for many refugees then entering Germany from the former Yugoslavia – a fact that meant the construction of temporary structures for encampment and housing. Today, we are experiencing yet another large-scale crisis of human displacement and a need for temporary housing structures.

Sammelstelle, 1992/2017
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Sammelstelle, 1992/2017
Corrugated iron, steel, aluminium

Courtesy of the artist and Wentrup Gallery (Berlin)
Presented with the support of Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen.

b. 1966, Baghdad, Iraq
lives in Burlington, Ontario, Canada

It takes thousands of years to build a civilisation, but only minutes to destroy one. In 1991, Mahmoud Obaidi left his native Iraq, a nearly 7,000 year old civilisation torn apart by war. His works respond both to the loss of his homeland, and to the role of art in visualising and re-creating this sense of home and its dissolution.

Obaidi is showing three works that respond in a personal manner to the recent history of Iraq. His installation Compact Home Project (2003–04), shown at Galata Greek Primary School, is an archive of sketches, newspaper clippings and other ephemera collected before leaving Iraq. Their protective folders suggest that the artist is trying to safeguard his memories from warfare or destruction. Meanwhile, two paintings shown at Istanbul Modern – Make War Not Love, Chapter 3 and Make War Not Love, Chapter 4 (both 2013–15) – conjure the recent memory of war, loss of home, disillusion and the artist’s experience of violence.

Compact Home Project, 2003–04
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Make War Not Love, Chapter 3, 2013–15
Make War Not Love, Chapter 4, 2013–15
Mixed media on canvas

Compact Home Project, 2003–04
8 metal boxes containing metal books 

Courtesy of the artist

b. 1967, Esbjerg, Denmark
lives in Berlin, Germany

Henrik Olesen’s installation of ghostly collages for the Istanbul Biennial focuses on the figure of the ‘dirty neighbour’ and the capacity of neighbourhoods to become sites of voyeurism and fetishism, as well as of prying, gossip, suspicion and insecurity. Olesen is showing a series of collages that respond in an associative manner to questions of viewership, intimacy and transgression, while in their abject inchoateness they resonate with Georges Bataille’s notion of the informe (the ‘formless’) as well as with the work of Turkish abstract painters such as Adnan Çoker and Fahrelnissa Zeid. The collages are produced through a method of layering of transparent plastics and mirrored backgrounds, creating abstractions of familiar objects such as keys, eyeglasses and cables.

Cables, Keys, Glasses, Lights, 2017, detail
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Cables, Keys, Glasses, Lights, 2017
Mixed-media installation

Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz
Produced with the support of the Danish Arts Foundation and Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen.

b. 1971, Derik, Mardin, Turkey
lives in Diyarbakır, Turkey

Erkan Özgen’s work Wonderland (2016) reflects on the ineffability of trauma. The short film introduces a thirteen-year-old boy named Mohammed, who escaped from Kobani in northern Syria, directly south of the border with Turkey – a city that experienced a significant siege by ISIL forces in January 2015. Since he is deaf and unable to express himself verbally, Mohammad can use only his body to articulate his traumatic experiences.

Wonderland, 2016
Video still

Exhibited works

Wonderland, 2016
Single-channel HD video, 3:54 min.

Courtesy of the artist
Presented with the support of SAHA – Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey.

b. 1986, Meran, Italy
lives in Vienna, Austria

Many of us have dreamt that a familiar home is suddenly and inexplicably filled with unexplored chambers, rooms and wings. Domestic settings are near-archetypal sites of comfort, longing and belonging; they can be shaped by dreams and nightmares alike. These highly affective places, sites of scripted behaviour and patterns of movement, correspond to our fears and aspirations.

Spanning the attic of the Galata Greek Primary School, Leander Schönweger’s project Our Family Lost (2017) responds in dreamlike fashion to these notions of architecture, intimacy and estrangement – whether in private homes or institutional buildings.

Our Family Lost, 2017
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Our Family Lost, 2017
Mixed media

Courtesy of the artist
Produced with the support of Phileas – A Fund for Contemporary Art and The Federal Chancellery of Austria.

b. 1982, Thisted, Denmark
lives in Copenhagen, Denmark

What makes a house a home? While two spaces may appear identical, the difference might lie in the capacity for a home that has been lived in, physically touched, to encode and retain memory – the smells, patterns, feelings and recollections that accrue with habit.

After Dan Stockholm’s father passed away in 2013, the artist initiated an action that reflects on the physicality of touch and acts of mourning and memory – the results of which are assembled in his installation HOUSE (2013–16). The installation includes documentation of an action during which Stockholm, over the course of three days, physically touched the complete outer surface of his father’s red brick home. After the final square inch was touched, Stockholm began making a number of negative plaster casts of his hands performing the different gestures.

HOUSE, 2013–16
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

HOUSE, 2013–16
Scaffolding, plaster casts, stainless steel, water, epoxy

Courtesy of the artist
Presented with the support of the Danish Arts Foundation.

b. 1983, Istanbul, Turkey
lives in Istanbul, Turkey

City life entails the coexistence of numerous people living in close proximity, whose relationships, encounters and interactions are largely products of chance and serendipity. Life-paths may intersect, or they may not. Architect and photographer Ali Taptık’s Friends & Strangers (2017) tells a story about individuals from four different parts of Istanbul and their unexpected crossing of paths.

The work portrays three people who are invited to the artist’s studio and are asked three questions from Max Frisch’s Questionnaire (1966). The work involves an online component, through which Taptık’s characters and their interactions can be experienced.

www.friendsandstrangers.net

Friends and Strangers, 2017
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Friends and Strangers, 2017
4 archival pigment prints, folio wall paper, 3 archival pigment prints, website

Courtesy of the artist
Produced with the support of SAHA – Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey.

Contributors

Designer
Okay Karadayılar
Production Assistant
Öykü Canlı
Casting Director
Deniz Memişoğlu

Actors
Doğa Nalbantoğlu - Cem Varol
Burcu Çelik - Merve Sandıkçı
Erman Bağrı - Mikail Eşrefoğlu

Editor - Translation
Begüm Kovulmaz
English Copy Edit Ariel Rosen

Website coding
Merve Kaptan, David Unwin

b. 1986, Manisa, Turkey
Lives in Istanbul, Turkey      

Bilal Yılmaz’s Dirty Box (2016) documents the disappearance of traditions of skilled labour due to recent changes in urban life in Istanbul. For a period of time, the artist interviewed and photographed local craftsmen who still employ artisanal knowledge passed down by generations. For Yılmaz, amid the processes of cleaning up cities for and by global capital, ‘dirt’ stands for the elusive, unexpected and chaotic aspects of cities: the historical, material debris, manual labour and crafts, or the gritty sense of specificity that is the first to go as cities are homogenised. Dirt, then, is something to be treasured and – as here – affectionately documented.

Dirty Box,2016
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Dirty Box, 2016
Mixed-media installation
Music composer: Alban Telaku

Courtesy of the artist
Presented with the support of SAHA – Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey.

b. 1982, Ankara, Turkey
lives in Istanbul, Turkey

Commissioned for the 15th Istanbul Biennial, and filmed on the Bosporus, Volkan Aslan’s video installation Home Sweet Home (2017) is a meditative take on displacement. With its disjunctions of time and perspective, and imagery of water and travel, the work commemorates individuals forced to make long journeys.

It reflects on isolation, and on a world upended and inverted, in which many are on the move and in emotional disarray, where incidents that initially seemed to be too distant to affect us are closer than we think, and neighbours we may not know are in fact right beside us.

Home Sweet Home, 2017
Video still

Exhibited works

Home Sweet Home, 2017
Three-channel video, 6:47 min.

Courtesy of the artist
Produced with the support of SAHA – Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey, Emin Hitay and Elgiz Museum Friends of Lesvos

b. 1989, Ordu, Turkey
lives in Ordu, Ankara, Konya and Istanbul, Turkey

‘Progress’, or the advancement of human history, encompasses a number of ruinous and destructive acts. Processes of construction and wreckage are closely linked. The ideologies, instruments and technologies of human advancement are intertwined with the reality of natural resource exhaustion, ecological collapse, war, displacement and the precariousness of financial and environmental systems. The work D8M by Alper Aydın responds to human interactions with nature in pursuit of urban expansion and development.

Home Sweet Home, 2017
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

D8M, 2017
Bulldozer blade, trees

Courtesy of the artist
Produced and presented with the support of Ayşegül & Ömer Özyürek and SAHA – Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey

b. 1965, Venice, Italy
lives in Berlin, Germany

Monica Bonvicini’s works explore the complex history of intimacy and power in relationship to space and the body. In the first, large room of the formerly male part of the hammam, Bonvicini presents Weave This Way (2016), a collage of female body parts, culled from glossy print magazines. The stark nudity of the cluster of pink skin, legs and arms supplants the erotic charge of these images. Locating the work in the hammam creates a link to Jean- Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ The Turkish Bath (1862) and its depiction of female nudes within an analogous space. Directly opposite stands the sculpture GUILT (2017), reflecting both space and visitor in a disjointed manner. In the adjacent back space of the hammam, three fluorescent light works intentionally over-expose the visitor as well as the central cube-like sculpture Belt Out (2017), constructed from male leather belts.

Belt Out, 2017
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Bent and Winded, 2017
LED tubes, wire, steel
Courtesy of the artist and Mitchel-Innes & Nash, New York

Weave This Way, 2016
Prints onto tyvek

GUILT, 2017
Steel and polished stainless steel mirror

Chainlinked # 1, 2017
LED lights, electrical wire and cables, rubber cups, tape

Chainlinked # 2, 2017
LED lights, electrical wire and cables, rubber cups, tape

Belt Out, 2017
MDF, mirror, male belts

Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Peter Kilchmann (Zurich), König Galerie (Berlin), Mitchell-Innes & Nash (New York), Galleria Raffaella Cortese (Milan)
Produced with the support of König Galerie (Berlin) and Galleria Raffaella Cortese (Milan).
Presented with the support of Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen.
© Monica Bonvicini and VG-Bild Kunst

b. 1911, Paris, France
d. 2010, New York, NY, USA

Louise Bourgeois’ series Femme Maison, begun in the 1940s, depicts a nude woman who, in place of a head, has a multi-storey house. The woman appears to be locked or costumed within its domestic interior. The home itself is not drawn with conventional perspective, and contains windows and planes of differing styles. The body, meanwhile, is naked and vulnerable, and its small arms do not correspond to the anatomical proportions of the body. The piece plays with a familiar childhood trope wherein the home is a head: windows for eyes, and a door for a mouth. More generally, Femme Maison presents an interplay between self-exposure and hiding, a union between interior and exterior space, between external gaze and private reality.

The title takes literally the meaning of ‘Femme Maison’ – housewife – pointing to the home as a site of gender inequality or gender differentiation, as well as domestic labour as an activity of alienation. In the 1940s, when Bourgeois was beginning this series, she was living in a country foreign to her, the US, and becoming a mother: tied to the exigencies of the body yet alienated from her home terrain. The piece is ambiguous: it could imply that domestic responsibilities were occupying the artist’s mind; or it could be a tragic, humorous or absurdist notion of a body completely united with a home. Of the woman depicted in this series, Bourgeois once wrote: ‘She does not know that she is half naked, and she does not know that she is trying to hide. That is to say, she is totally self-defeating because she shows herself at the very moment that she thinks she is hiding.’

Bourgeois also once said in an interview that ‘for me, sculpture is the body. My body is my sculpture’, which points to a possible third interpretation: that she identifies both the woman and the home with the constructive potential of art.

Femme Maison, 1984 (1990)

Exhibited works

Femme Maison, 1984
Photogravure, printed (1990)
47 x 32.7 cm
Collection İKSV

b. 1974, El Khnansa, Morocco
lives in Martigny, Switzerland

In our age of political and economic turbulence, it often feels as if the world around us is crumbling. Yet how do such collective narratives of progress or destruction relate to subjective, personal experiences, and how do we distinguish between them?

Echakhch’s mural installation Crowd Fade (2017) examines notions of entropy, chance and decay, and more specifically, the deterioration of ideals such as democracy, protest and political progress, which have recently succumbed to perfidious forces worldwide. Painted directly onto the two walls, with a lack of any sense that there is a ‘beyond’ or ‘behind’, the work conveys a feeling of being caught between the past and the future.

Crowd Fade, 2017,
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Crowd Fade, 2017
Fresco

Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Kamel Mennour (Paris), Kaufmann Repetto (Milan), Galerie Eva Presenhuber (Zurich), Dvir Gallery (Tel Aviv)
Produced with the support of Pro Helvetia and Institut Français.
Presented with the support of Galerie Kamel Mennour, Kaufmann Repetto, Galerie Eva Presenhuber and Dvir Gallery.

b. 1936, Istanbul, Turkey
lives in Istanbul, Turkey

Candeğer Furtun employs traditional ceramic techniques in order to examine and portray the human body. Furtun’s Untitled (1994–96) shows nine pairs of bare human legs placed side by side on a tiled bench. Suggesting a number of bodies in a row, the work could reference the hammam culture of Turkey, in which people sit on benches in a space of healing and rest. Yet it might also recall the seating of people on public transport, in waiting rooms, or other public/private spaces. Or perhaps this group of masculine limbs quietly addresses the furtive conditions and exclusionary tactics of male power. Furtun herself has alluded to an allegorical representation of Turkey and its eight neighbours.

Untitled, 1994–96
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Untitled, 1994–96
Ceramic

Courtesy of the artist
Presented with the support of SAHA – Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey.

b. 1989, Seoul, South Korea
lives in Seoul, South Korea

Where do we pass our daily lives? In ‘real’ life, or within the simulated habitus of screens? Today, even our most acutely felt, corporeal experiences are monitored, recorded and visualised through medical tracking, GPS and surveillance. Kim Heecheon’s Lifting Barbells’ (2015) tugging sense of itinerancy and homesickness provokes general questions about the way we live now, at a time when everyday life is punctuated by simulation and the unreal.

The video’s title resonates with aspects of the film: the lifting by the narrator, on the request of a paramedic, of his deceased father’s head and the girlfriend’s innocuous question as to whether the narrator has been ‘lifting weights’ recently. Such ‘heavy lifting’ becomes a cipher for personal struggles to overcome the weight of the past.

Lifting Barbells, 2015
Video still

Exhibited works

Lifting Barbells, 2015
Single-channel HD Video, 21:22 min.

Courtesy of the artist
Presented with the support of Arts Council Korea

b. 1979, Tehran, Iran
lives in Berlin, Germany

The works of Mirak Jamal span autobiographical anecdote and shared history, a politically charged past of escape and adjustment, remembering and forgetting. As a child, his family of artists fled post-Revolution Iran for the neighbouring USSR, before moving to West Germany, the US, and ultimately to Canada.

Jamal incorporates his own childhood drawings in his work, bearing witness to an adolescence where notions of ‘home’ were in constant flux. Memory is presented as a kaleidoscopic re-summoning of emotional attachment to places that are transitory and fragile, underlined by using simple, brittle drywall panels in place of canvas.

Installation view
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

In public, where I want to feel free and the park is filled with trees, bees and some fleas, 2017
Drywall panel in frame, triptych

At home, where the smell of steamed cabbage does not bother, where it’s just me below my father, 2017
Drywall panel in frame, diptych

Monster of Minsk, 2017
Drywall panel in frame

untitled (weapons), 1987, executed in Germany
Pen on paper

untitled (Minsk kitchen still life), 1984, executed in USSR
Pen on paper

Courtesy of the artist

b. 1932, Porto, Portugal
d. 2012, Porto, Portugal

During the 1940s, abstract painting achieved recognition in Portugal primarily through the works of Fernando Lanhas. Although today he is primarily known as a painter, the rationality of his forms can also be related to his other vocation as an architect who designed and built houses in the modernist style. The works depict the house that Lanhas designed and built for his own family. In their transition from architectural presentation boards to collage, they transmute the rigidity and clarity of the architectural forms from the cool modernism and rationalism of their design to sites of domestic affection, intimacy, identification and love.

Untitled, 1960
Video still

Exhibited works

Untitled, undated
Photography and collage on platex (triptych)

Untitled, 1958
Photography on wood

Untitled, 1960
Photography on wood

Untitled, 1960
Photography on wood

Courtesy of Galeria Quadrado Azul
Collection Pedro Lanhas

b. 1979, São Paulo, Brazil
lives in São Paulo, Brazil

The works of Victor Leguy point out how institutionalised or official accounts of history undergo simplification or obfuscation due to ideology, politics, ignorance or corruption. His project Structures for Invisible Borders (2016–17) started out focussing on histories and trajectories of migration and displacement in the context of São Paulo, Brazil. For the 15th Istanbul Biennial, Leguy extends his Brazil project with an investigation of Turkey’s migratory flows and the cultural transfer in a country that is experiencing the influx of 3.5 million Syrian refugees. He invited people whom he met at The Pages bookshop and café in Fener, Istanbul, to exchange a significant object and their personal stories with him. These objects are partially painted white and displayed as a horizon on a long wall, recalling conditions of symbolic invisibility, imposed assimilation and the whitewashing of information, narratives and histories.

Structures for Invisible Borders, 2016–17, detail

Exhibited works

Structures for Invisible Borders, 2016–17
Mixed media

Courtesy of the artist

b. 1979, Stockholm, Sweden
lives in Berlin, Germany

The works of Klara Lidén employ discrete elements of the built environment of public or urban space. She appropriates these elements to investigate questions surrounding privatisation and a disappearing commons or spaces for public use. Her sculptures, which appear industrial or functional, recall spaces within a city, incorporating found objects, especially building materials or things culled from the urban settings of Berlin.

For the Biennial, Lidén is presenting three works that refer both to the street and to bourgeois interiors and waiting rooms: Untitled (studyzaun) (2017), Untitled (wartezaun) (2017), and Untitled (liegezaun) (2017). Inflections of the word ‘Zaun’ – meaning ‘fence’ in German – they are intended to block viewership as much as to be viewed, laid in, waited in, or studied in.

Untitled (liegezaun), 2017, Untitled (wartezaun), 2017, and Untitled (studyzaun), 2017

Exhibited works

Untitled (liegezaun), 2017

Untitled (wartezaun), 2017

Untitled (studyzaun), 2017

Wood, metal, concrete footings, pillow, lamp

Courtesy of the artist and Reena Spaulings Fine Art (NY/LA)
Presented with the support of Reena Spaulings Fine Art (NY/LA).

b. 1992, Saïda, Algeria
lives in Oran, Algeria and London, UK

Lydia Ourahmane’s sculpture comments on property rights to the realms above and below the physical site of ownership. The work begins with a plot of land, which the artist purchased at a low price in Arzew, Algeria, a small port city that has experienced significant pollution and toxic emissions due to its heavy industry along the coast. Together with non-regulation of real estate and an expanded black market, this makes it possible to purchase small plots of contaminated land at low prices. Ourahmane’s 4 x 4 metre sculpture, shown in Istanbul, replicates the size of the piece of land bought in Arzew.

By looking at land use and transfer, Ourahmane’s work shows how our experiences of the environment shift through the direct influences of capitalism, colonialism and contamination, both psychological and real.

All the way up to the Heavens and down to the depths of Hell, 2017
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

All the way up to the Heavens and down to the depths of Hell, 2017
Concrete, steel, water, trumpet solo

Courtesy of the artist
Presented with the support of Jerwood Charitable Foundation.

b. 1983, Ashqout, Lebanon
lives in Beirut, Lebanon

Tabet’s Colosse Aux Pieds D'Argile (2015) is a sculptural installation comprising numerous marble columns and concrete cylinders, which were found by the artist in a junkyard in his native Beirut. They had come from the site of a historical family home in the middle of the city. When a real-estate speculator wanted to purchase the house for the prime site on which it stood, many family members who had inherited it engaged in a legal dispute that made it impossible to sell it. According to property laws in Beirut, a home with no roof must either be fully renovated or sold, and so the developer hired a group of workers to covertly collapse the roof, paving the way for a new high-rise on the site. Tabet’s work looks at the commonalities between homesteads past and present, the destruction and natural entropy of buildings and architectures, as well as capitalist profitmaking and its processes of ruin.

Colosse Aux Pieds D’Argile, 2015
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Colosse Aux Pieds D’Argile, 2015
Marble and sandstone columns, marble and sandstone bases, concrete cylinders

Courtesy of the artist
Collection Aishti Foundation

b. 1989, Seoul, South Korea
lives in Berlin, Germany

Titled The Silence and Eloquence of Objects (2017), Young-Jun Tak’s installation for the Istanbul Biennial reflects on the imbrication of domestic setting with personal identity, and situations of mobility and itinerancy. The work takes the form of a full-scale replica of Tak’s former Seoul apartment – his second after moving away from his parents – hung upside down from the ceiling and rendered white.

In South Korea, it is common for young people to inhabit these small, studio flats (known as ‘one-room’), where the kitchen, bedroom and living room are all confined within one space. Young people move in and out of such apartments with a high rate of turnover, due to soaring rents. This situation is widespread in cities around the world, reflecting the gentrification of previously affordable districts and the targeting of newly built homes at the affluent.

The Silence and Eloquence of Objects, 2017
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

The Silence and Eloquence of Objects, 2017
Mixed media

Courtesy of the artist
Produced with the support of Arts Council Korea.

b. 1972, San Bernardino, California, USA
lives in Los Angeles, California, USA

Kaari Upson takes an almost anthropological approach to the domestic sphere and its contents. Her work examines representations and experiences of memory and affect, of decoration and disorder, of desire and repulsion. For the 15th Istanbul Biennial, Upson expands on her investigation of what the Austrian philosopher Alexius Meinong has called the ‘home-less object’ – objects for which, as Slavoj Žižek has elaborated, ‘There is no place ... neither in reality nor in the domain of the possible.’ The sculptural inhabitants of Upson’s spectral and dreamlike world – discarded furniture and objects found on the streets, weathered and mutated through their expulsion – uncannily evoke the familiarity of the domestic and its seductive and unknowable inverse.

Also included is Upson’s recent video In Search of the Perfect Double (2016–17), which documents her visits to scores of abandoned 70s tract houses in and around Las Vegas.

Trashole Trashole, 2015; Hommelette, 2017 ve Situated, 2015
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Hommelette, 2017
Urethane, pigment

90 Degrees at 270 Degrees, 2016
Supplement (3 Holes), 2017
Him/Him, 2017
Trashole Trashole, 2015
Situated, 2015
Urethane, pigment, aluminium

In Search of the Perfect Double, 2016–17
Single-channel video, colour, sound, 36:18 min.

Courtesy of the artist, Massimo De Carlo (Milan/London/Hong Kong) and Sprüth Magers (Berlin/London/Los Angeles)

Presented with support of Massimo De Carlo (Milan/London/Hong Kong) and Sprüth Magers (Berlin/London/Los Angeles).

b. 1984, Cape Town, South Africa
lives in Cape Town, South Africa

The sculptures and installations of Kemang Wa Lehulere engage with the educational and experiential divides felt by people of different colours and backgrounds, whether from the artist’s native South African context or outside of it. Lehulere’s installation Conference of the Birds (2017) examines contemporary group dynamics in a world riven by oppositions, identities and belief systems. In this work (named after an album by the Dave Holland Quartet), a series of sixteen blackboards, inspired by forgotten countries that no longer exist, investigates historical erasure. A cluster of sixteen birdhouses and a Turkish school desk accompany them, exploring current restraints to freedom of assembly along with legacies of institutional racism and injustice in an age of ‘post-truth’ and institutional antagonism.

Conference of the Birds, 2017, detail
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Conference of the Birds, 2017
Used school desk, wood, spray-paint, chalk, blackboard paint

Courtesy of the artist and Stevenson (Cape Town and Johannesburg)

b. 1975, Luanda, Angola
lives in Harare, Zimbabwe

Yonamine’s densely layered collages respond to his experience of acculturation, segregation, itinerancy, social differentiation and gentrification across cities in Africa and Europe. They are composed from vernacular imagery sourced directly from the street and urban space, incorporating references to graffiti, tattoo art, street art, wheat-pasting, corporate lettering, brands and street posters.

For the 15th Istanbul Biennial, Yonamine has created a site-specific collage directly on the walls of Istanbul Modern, incorporating altered visuals found on the web – which the artist perceives as a digital extension of public space – as well as popular imagery from Turkey. While presenting the visuals and icons of globalisation and capitalism, the works evoke the accumulation and erasure of memories and histories across place and time, as well as the artist’s bodily and psychological experience of being ‘in-between’ cultures, nations and urban lives.

Drontheimer Strasse 19 I, 2015 and Tamam 3, 2017
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren  

Exhibited works

Kaboom! 1, 2017
Back in Black, 2015
Pillskills, 2015
Black Akman, 2015
Drontheimer Strasse 19 I, 2015
Mixed media on canvas
Courtesy of the artist and Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art (Lisbon)

Tamam 1, 2017
Tamam 2, 2017
Tamam 3, 2017
Mixed media
Courtesy of the artist and Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art (Lisbon)

No Names, 2015
Mixed media on canvas
Collection Fundação de Serralves - Museu de Arte Contemporânea (Porto, Portugal)

My Name’s Bond, 2015
Mixed media on canvas
Courtesy of a private collection

Presented and produced with the support of Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art (Lisbon).

b. 1965, Inner Mongolia
lives in Beijing, China

Xiao Yu’s Ground (2014/17) is a durational performance involving a donkey that has been brought from the countryside north of Istanbul and trained by two Chinese farmers. A plough led by an animal and a human represents one of the most ancient forms of agricultural activity. Yet in an increasingly urban world, many people have never experienced or witnessed such physical labour. The work speaks to the interdependence of nature and agriculture, the taming of animals and their relationship to humans, as well as notions of labour and technological expansion. Increasingly, with ecological fragility and the threat of a coming age of water and food scarcity, it is perhaps no longer the human who controls nature, but the opposite: nature exerts its grip on humanity as the direction of the tracks reverses.

The performance took place only during the opening week of the Biennial, until the mixture of soil and cement was set in its furrows.

Ground, 2014/17
Photo by Ilgın Erarslan Yanmaz

Exhibited works

Ground, 2014/17
Cement, sandy soil, donkey, plough, farmers

Courtesy of the artist
Produced with the support of Dr. Uli Sigg and Pace Gallery (Beijing).

In 2001, an incident occurred in Egypt in which fifty men aboard the Queen Boat, a gay disco floating on the Nile, were arrested. The men were apprehended by the authorities, tortured and subjected to media exposure that would entail significant reputational damage. While in the courtroom, the accused men covered their faces with white fabric to protect their identities. In one press photograph, a man with his face only partially covered is seen crying. This powerful image has become iconic within the Egyptian gay community as an expression of forced exposure, suffering and concealment as homosexuals continue to be persecuted.

Mahmoud Khaled’s Proposal for a House Museum of an Unknown Crying Man (2017) is grounded in this historical event, but fictionalises the biographical details of a particular individual who represents the stigmatised groups in places such as the artist’s native Egypt. The home-museum of this erudite and cultivated unknown man contains paintings, sculptures, objects, photographs, as well as his personal belongings. The work is located in ARK Kültür, a modernist villa in Cihangir, close to Istanbul Modern and Galata Greek Primary School, as well as Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence, also a fictional museum. ARK Kültür is the former home of an antiques dealer – who was himself homosexual – and who is one point of reference for Khaled’s crying man. The fictional museum also includes an audio tour narrated from the perspective of a neighbour: an individual who has partially observed, with intimacy as well as distance, the goings-on of the unknown man’s private life. While documenting a specific biography, history and identity, the work concerns itself with larger questions, such as the dialectics of exposure and concealment; the entanglement of neighbourhood, vigilance and testament; the interrelations of public and private spheres; as well as the complex history of gays in the Middle East and Africa and the persecution they continue to experience.

Proposal for a House Museum of an Unknown Crying Man, 2017, detail

Exhibited works

Proposal for a House Museum of an Unknown Crying Man, 2017
Mixed media

Courtesy of the artist
Produced with the support of Arts Council Norway, Ari Meşulam and Office for Contemporary Art Norway.

b. 1971, Constantine, Algeria
lives in London, UK and Paris, France

Adel Abdessemed’s work Cri (2013) unites material history and human tragedy. The sculpture appropriates a black and white photograph, taken by the photojournalist Nick Ut in 1972, in which four young children can be seen running down the road, screaming as napalm rains down on them as South Vietnamese troops bombed North Vietnam.

When decontextualised by Abdessemed, the figure appears alienated in a different way, as if frozen in time. It speaks to the loss of home, safety, dignity and life, and conjures the tragic timelessness of suffering and violence.

Cri, 2013
Photo by Dylan Perrenoud

Exhibited works

Cri, 2013
Ivory
Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe

b. 1983, Enugu, Nigeria
lives in Los Angeles, California, USA

Employing acrylic and paper transfer methods, the paintings of Njideka Akunyili Crosby speak to the duplication of images, the contours of memory and the marks left after representations, places and people are reproduced, passed down and transferred. The paintings frequently depict interior spaces that contain family and shared cultural histories, in many cases referring to the artist’s childhood in Nigeria or her experience of the Nigerian diaspora, living in the US.

Grandmother’s Parlour, 2016
Photo by Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Exhibited works

Nyado: The Thing Around Her Neck, 2011
Grandmother’s Parlour, 2016
‘The Beautyful Ones’ Series #1c, 2014

Acrylic, transfers, charcoal, lace, collage and coloured pencils on paper

Courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro (London)
Presented with the support of Victoria Miro (London)

b. 1977, Mexico City, Mexico
lives in Guadalajara, Mexico

Alejandro Almanza Pereda’s Horror Vacui (2010–17) series appropriates existing Romantic-style landscape and genre paintings, of which those shown at the 15th Istanbul Biennial are sourced by the artist from within Turkey.

By contrasting these petit bourgeois depictions of outdoor space with a building material such as concrete, Almanza Pereda calls attention to the space-filling processes of human construction. The series’ title, ‘horror vacui’ – ‘fear or dislike of empty spaces’ – refers to a traditional visual technique of filling a pictorial plane’s negative space with detail. The installation sets an idyllic view of nature against the corrosive and relentless process of humans shaping geography to their will.

Horror Vacui (Autumn Scene #2), 2017
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Horror Vacui (Autumn Scene #2), 2017
Horror Vacui (Lake Scene), 2017
Horror Vacui (Spring Scene #2), 2017

Oil painting, concrete

Courtesy of the artist and ChertLüdde (Berlin)
Produced with the support of Elif Bayoğlu & Mehmet Erdem

b. 1964, Ghent, Belgium
lives in Ghent, Belgium

In her work Spreken (To Speak, 1999), Berlinde De Bruyckere further explores self-exposure and hiding. Her sculpture becomes a fraught allegory for human communication, stealth and union, intimacy and speech. The work seems to ask: can two humans ever speak to one another in any meaningful sense? Is mutual understanding possible? It also suggests contemporary questions urgently present in the world around us: is human communication becoming increasingly private, with less visibility and access to a public? Or have the figures created a kind of furtive ‘home’ for themselves with these blankets in order to speak freely in the only private place where they can do so? Is this a depiction of free speech under threat – and if so, by whom?

Spreken, 1999
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Spreken, 1999
Metal, wood, blankets, polyester, polyurethane
200 x 140 x 80 cm

Courtesy of the artist, Collection M HKA and Collection Flemish Community
Collection M HKA and Collection Flemish Community
Presented with the support of Flanders State of the Art.

b. 1985, Tbilisi, Georgia
lives in Berlin, Germany

The works of Vajiko Chachkhiani often question how and whether the living present separates itself from past life and history. His short video Life Track (2015) is a portrait of human existence under conditions of confinement.

The work engages in a tense dialectics of observation, activity, entropy and aging. We find ourselves gazing into a window whose wooden frame is cracked and peeling. A man comes into the frame, staring back at us from inside the darkened room. Is he spying on us? Or are we staring into his world? Is this a familiar neighbourly expression, or the gaze as an instrument of social control?

Life Track, 2015
Video still, detail

Exhibited works

Life Track, 2015
Single-channel HD video, 3:34 min.

Courtesy of the artist and Daniel Marzona (Berlin)

b. 1981, Kütahya, Turkey
lives in Istanbul, Turkey

Working with found garments and domestic fabrics, Gözde İlkin is interested in objects that embody cultural codes and collective memory. She uses these textiles as intimate materials that carry the traces of history, while devising her own contemporary imagery through the techniques of needlework, stitching and painting. She uses both figurative and abstract forms to represent social and political relationships, confrontation and definitions of power, or gender, sexuality and urban histories. For the 15th Istanbul Biennial, İlkin presents a number of works constructed from fabrics that come from her family, modified by stitching, patching and appliqué techniques she learned directly from her mother and grandmother. For İlkin, patterns in fabrics are structures that bridge memory and the present, the imagined and the real.

At-Home Day, from the series Please Clear the Dance Floor!, 2009
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Inverted Home, 2017
A series of 8 works

Boys Eat Turkish Delight, 2008
Courtesy of the artist and artSümer Gallery
Collection Leila Heller

At-Home Day, from the series Please Clear the Dance Floor!, 2009
Courtesy of the artist and artSümer Gallery
Collection Ebru Özdemir

Embroidery and painting on fabric

Presented with the support of SAHA – Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey.

b. 1951, Buenos Aires, Argentina                               
d. 1994, Buenos Aires, Argentina

The sculptures and actions of Liliana Maresca were done in the wake of the Argentinian dictatorship and ensuing state violence, which ended in 1983: a period of state terrorism, bloody strife and numerous unresolved disappearances.

Maresca’s untitled series of photographs from 1984 comprise a photo performance, documented by Marcós López. The abandoned Marconetti building, near Buenos Aires’ Parque Lezama, was being occupied at the time by artists such as Maresca’s collaborator Daniel Riga. Representing a transition between exterior and interior, these images have political valence: a political way forward by means of personal actions.

Recolecta, 1990/2017, detail

Exhibited works

Untitled. Liliana Maresca in Marconetti Building, 1983/2017
Photo-performance, selenium gelatin silver print on llford fibre paper

Untitled. Liliana Maresca in Marconetti Building, 1983/2017
Photo-performance, selenium gelatin silver print on llford fibre paper

Untitled. Liliana Maresca in Marconetti Building, 1983/2017
Photo-performance, selenium gelatin silver print on llford fibre paper

Untitled. Liliana Maresca in Marconetti Building, 1983/2017
Photo-performance, selenium gelatin silver print on llford fibre paper

Courtesy of Archivo Liliana Maresca and Marcos López

Recolecta, 1990/2017
White cart from Recolecta installation at Centro Cultural Recoleta
Wood, paper, cardboard, metals and others, latex based paint
Courtesy of Archivo Liliana Maresca

b. 1907, Poughkeepsie, New York, USA
d. 1977, Chiddingly, East Sussex, UK

The German word Unheimlich, or ‘uncanny’, refers to the effect we feel when something familiar is made to seem eerie, horrific or strange. It reveals how our most cherished sites, such as our domestic spaces, are particularly liable to become bizarre or frightening under certain conditions. Such themes are among those provoked by a series of photographs taken by US journalists Lee Miller and David E. Scherman.

In 1945, Miller and Scherman took a tour of Germany. In southern Germany, they went on to Munich, where they managed to arrange to stay at Adolf Hitler’s apartment, as well as the nearby residence of Eva Braun, Hitler’s mistress.

Lee Miller in Hitler’s bathtub, Hitler’s apartment, 16 Prinzregentenplatz, Munich, Germany, 1945/2017
Photo by ©Lee Miller Archives, England 2017. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk

Exhibited works

King George VI beer mug - present from Chamberlain to Hitler, Hitler's apartment, 16 Prinzregentenplatz, Munich, Germany, 1945/2017

Frau Gardner at Hitler's apartment, 16 Prinzregentenplatz, Munich, Germany, 1945/2017

Photograph of Mussolini in Hitler's apartment, 16 Prinzregentenplatz, Munich, Germany, 1945/2017

Lee Miller in Hitler's bathtub, Hitler's apartment, 16 Prinzregentenplatz, Munich, Germany, 1945/2017

Lee Miller with David E Scherman
Hitler's bathroom, Hitler's apartment, 16 Prinzregentenplatz, Munich, Germany, 1945/2017
Eva Braun's house, 12 Wasserburger Straße, Munich, Germany, 1945/2017
Bed in Eva Braun's house, 12 Wasserburger Straße, Munich, Germany, 1945/2017
Lee Miller in Eva Braun's bed, 12 Wasserburger Straße, Munich, Germany, 1945/2017
Russian DP's (Displaced Person's) children in house formerly occupied by SS guards protecting Eva Braun, 12 Wasserburger Straße, Munich, Germany, 1945/2017

Modern C-Type digital exhibition print
Courtesy of Lee Miller Archives

b. 1983, Versailles, France
lives in Berlin, Germany

The fragility of nature itself has been revealed over the past 150 years, during which time humans have made an indelible imprint on our planet. Plastics, for instance, cannot be broken down by natural processes, and will remain on the earth for many centuries. In Aude Pariset’s piece, Toddler Promession®, common molitor worms consume a Styrofoam mattress, rendering this notoriously polluting material biodegradable through their digestive processes. Pariset reflects on human interaction with natural ecology, as well as notions of domestic comfort and child rearing.

Toddler Promession®, 2016
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Toddler Promession®, 2016
Gulliver bed, Perspex, wheels, extruded polystyrene, Tenebrio Molitor worms, vents

Courtesy of the artist and SANDY BROWN (Berlin)

b. 1978, Singapore, Singapore
lives in Beijing, China

Sim Chi Yin’s project The Rat Tribe (2011–14) is a portrait of the low-wage migrant workers inhabiting 6,000 basements and air raid shelters in Beijing, which amount to nearly a third of the city’s underground spaces. Chi Yin’s photographs adopt the pejorative name (‘rat tribe’) coined by the Chinese media for this layer of society that resides underground, sleeping in cramped quarters with no or little natural light and only a modicum of comfort in order to live within proximity to the city centre where they work.

Being a portrait of the all-too-physical costs of globalisation, Chi Yin’s project calls attention to the effects of global capital concentrated in cities, while putting a human face on the realities of migration and exploitation that some are never forced to examine.

Niu Song and Zhao Ansheng, from the series the Rat Tribe, 2011–14, detail

Exhibited works

Selection from The Rat Tribe, 2011–14

Ling Shenjie, Liu Hao and a friend, 2011–14
Jia Ruixin and Cheng Huan, 2011–14
Xiao Si, 2011–14
Ji Lanlan and Yu Qi, 2011–14
Chen Laxiu, 2011–14
Ren Liang, Wang Shaobao and Feng Delun, 2011–14
Zhou Limei and Zhao Qingxuang, 2011–14
‘Big Rain’, 2011–14
Jing Ranming, 2011–14
Niu Song and Zhao Ansheng, 2011–14
Zhang Xinwen, 2011–14
Zhuang Qiuli and Feng Tao, 2011–14

Giclee printing on Photo Rag® Baryta

Courtesy of the artist
Produced with the support of National Arts Council Singapore.
Presented with the support of Singapore International Foundation.

b. 1961, New Delhi, India
lives in New Delhi, India

The works of Dayanita Singh explore how our homes are assembled to reflect ‘us’ – our own preferences, memories and views. Singh’s ‘museums’ – encapsulating images of homes and of her friends and neighbourhood – are portable structures; subjectively captured, they can be subjectively reconfigured too.

Her Museum of Shedding (2016) represents a notion of the museum stripped down to basic domestic-sized objects and furniture. Singh is interested in archives as sites where space and time are joined, as well as the acts of memory that are invoked when we select and recombine images from the past.

Museum of Shedding, 2016
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Museum of Shedding, 2016
73 framed photographs, teak, museum acrylic, 1 large structure, 1 bed, 1 desk & stool, 1 table & stool, visitors bench, paper weight, 6 small structures each holding 3 framed photographs, 3 small structures each holding 5 framed photographs, 2 storage units each holding 20 framed photographs

Courtesy of the artist and Frith Street Gallery (London)

b. 1968, Cosenza, Italy
lives in Paris, France

For the 15th Istanbul Biennial, Tatiana Trouvé has cast two hut-like cardboard structures in bronze. The first, Somewhere in the Solar System (2016–17), incorporates a chart of contemporary migration patterns. The second, The Great Atlas of Disorientation (2017), juxtaposes physical data about the earth with geological chronology and an Aztec timeline for the end of the planet, sun and universe.

A third sculpture takes the form of a totem, entitled From 2002 to 2016 (2017). For this work, a number of pieces of soap, which were used by the team of assistants that helped Trouvé during the preparations for each of her exhibitions during that fourteen-year period, have been cast in bronze and painted. Combined with the hut works and their references to communal history-making, this work becomes a tactile marker of the collaborative process of making the work, shared by many hands.

Pera Museum, installation shot
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren
© Tatiana Trouvé / ADAGP, Paris, 2017

Exhibited works

Somewhere In The Solar System, 2016–17
Bronze, copper, aluminium, paint, patina

Evaporating Crater, 2017
Bronze, plexiglass, paint, patina

The Great Atlas of Disorientation, 2017
Bronze, copper, aluminium, concrete, paint, patina

From 2002 to 2016, 2017
Patinated bronze, paint

Courtesy of the artist and König Galerie
© Tatiana Trouvé / ADAGP, Paris, 2017
Presented with the support of König Galerie.

b. 1976, Shantou, China
lives in Hong Kong

Drawing on Judeo-Christian eschatology, metaphysics, existentialism and the words of the Bible, the seven videos in series The Seven Seals (2009–ongoing) refer to apocalyptic themes: philosophical and religious concepts about the end of the world. Their form echoes a notion of eternal recurrence – these floating, animated arrangements of words are set on an infinite loop.

At the 15th Istanbul Biennial, Tsang is showing a multi-channel video installation from the series, The Fourth Seal – HE Is To No Purpose And HE Wants To Die For The Second Time (2010). It presents a number of animated words and sentences spanning a trajectory of life and death, struggle and overcoming, vanity and power, ascent and descent. Screened on the floor, this dizzying expression of fear and doom suggests inner spiritual turmoil and a sense of not-belonging in the world – an eternal homesickness.

The Fourth Seal –HE Is To No Purpose And HE Wants To Die For The Second Time, 2010
Photo by Artist & Aichi Triennale

Exhibited works

The Fourth Seal –HE Is To No Purpose And HE Wants To Die For The Second Time, 2010
Digital video and sound installation, 6:25 min.

Courtesy of the artist

b. 1979, Salonta, Romania
lives in New York, NY, USA

There is a link between external historical realities and interior domestic space: architecture, personal objects, design and functional arrangements and layouts all manifest specific personal histories and political moments. Using everyday materials, Ursuta has created miniature replicas of rooms in her childhood home on T. Vladimirescu street in the village of Salonta, Romania.

The titles of Ursuta’s works reflect the personal functional spaces of the home, but even these are inflected by historical realities: nationalism hovers over the name of Ursuta’s childhood street – Tudor Vladimirescu was then regarded as a Romanian revolutionary hero.

T. Vladimirescu No. 5, Kiler, 2013
Photo by Uli Holz

Exhibited works

T. Vladimirescu Nr. 5, Pantry, 2013
Wood, metal, glass, fabric, paint
Courtesy of the artist and Collection Artemis Baltoyanni

T. Vladimirescu Nr. 5, Sleeping room, 2013
Wood, metal, glass, fabric, paint
Courtesy of the artist and Aishti Foundation

Presented with the support of Massimo De Carlo Gallery (Milan/London/Hong Kong).

b. 1954, New York, NY, USA
lives in New York, NY, USA

The work of Fred Wilson considers the politics of inclusion, exclusion and erasure in the context of global cultural histories. This involves a questioning of the conventions of display within museums, as well as the notions of race that go unexplored within cultural, economic and artistic accounts.

Wilson’s installation for the Istanbul Biennial includes a number of handcrafted items related to Ottoman culture and the roles of black people within it. Black people have a long history 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.

Afro Kismet, 2017, detail
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Afro Kismet, 2017 

Historic photographs, engravings and oil paintings; contemporary acrylic paintings and miniatures, late 19th century Othello poster; Anthropomorphic terracotta flask from the 3rd century BC, glass pendants from the 5th century BC; contemporary Iznik tile panels, carpet, chandelier sculptures, globe sculpture, blown glass sculptures; mid 20th century wooden African mask, late 20th century African figures, wooden false wall, birdcage, antique chair and table, wall vinyl, mounted photo scans, cowrie shells   

Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery (New York)
Sponsored by the Denver Art Museum.

Founded in 2013, Istanbul, Turkey
based in Istanbul, Turkey

With roots in architecture and art, the Istanbul-based artist initiative Yoğunluk – which in Turkish means ‘Intensity’ – explores how the familiarity and conventions of space control and condition our human experiences. With their new site-specific installation The House (2017), they have transformed an Istanbul apartment rented by the collective as a studio. The work, impressionistic and atmospheric, aims to interlink our cognitive experience of the world with external and physical aspects, demonstrating how changes in lighting, sound, surface and atmosphere can have dramatic effects.

The installation can only be visited by a maximum of three visitors at a time, due to the scale of the installation and minimal lighting. Visitors are encouraged to touch the objects.

The House, 2017
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

The House, 2017

Silicon, dinner table, desk, plates, forks, knives, spoons, glasses, candles, armchair, tea table, chairs, books, paintings, lamp, dimmer, speaker, lights, clock

Courtesy of Yoğunluk
Produced with the support of SAHA – Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey.

b. 1977, Houston, Texas, USA
lives in Berlin, Germany

Stephen G. Rhodes’ multi-space installation in the former female section of the hammam comments on the human forces that are shortening our fragile timeline on earth. The many-layered work draws from recent instances in which humans have shown themselves capable of causing widespread destruction and pain – including ‘fracking’, the refugee crisis, the rise of the populist right in Germany, and fractious political polarisation worldwide – as well as their capacity to dissemble and cover-up such processes.

Willkommen Assumption: Or the Private Propertylessness and Pals, 2017, detail
Photo by Sahir Uğur Ceylan

Exhibited works

Willkommen Assumption: Or the Private Propertylessness and Pals, 2017
Installation, mixed media and film

Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi
Presented with the support of Zabludowicz Collection.

b. 1973, Mons, Belgium
lives in Istanbul, Turkey

Tuğçe Tuna; choreographer, dance artist, academic, and movement therapist. For the 15th Istanbul Biennial, she has created a new choreography entitled Body Drops (2017), performed by nine dancers on a regular schedule throughout the exhibition. Body Drops focuses on kinesthetic empathy, accumulations of the body, invisible losses of the body and what the body leaves behind in mind and space. The artist brings together neighbouring bodies under the dome of the hammam, creating a choreography inspired by the architectural characteristics of the space and the star signs of the performance artists.

Choreography days and hours
16-17 September 2017, 17.30 and 20.30
Every Saturday at 17.30 and 20.30 for the duration of the Biennial
The audience should make a reservation via rezervasyon.iksv.org.

The body is matter, it is conductive;
it conveys the life cycle.
The body will accumulate what is yours, your befores and afters.
The body remembers and transforms.
This cycle is a cosmic cycle.
The body has invisible losses.
The body evaporates as well. Each component that forms the body is found in stars, each body is a star.

T. Tuna, Istanbul, 2017

Body Drops, 2017, performance
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Body Drops, 2017
Choreography

Concept, Choreography, Director: Tuğçe Tuna
Choreography Artists: Ekin Ançel, Pınar Akyüz, Gülçin Erdiş, Aybike İpekçi, Erdem Kaynarca, Koray Çivril, Melih Kıraç, Hilal Sibel Pekel, Sinan Özer, Tuğçe Tuna
Sound Design: Tuğçe Tuna, Vahit Tuna
Light Design: Utku Kara
Project Production Assistant: Yonca Hiç
Venue Manager: Lale Madenoğlu

Courtesy of the artist
Produced with the support of SAHA – Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey.

b. 1976, Giresun, Turkey
lives in Istanbul, Turkey

Burçak Bingöl reproduces ordinary materials or objects using ceramic and ornamental patterns. Her glazing techniques, floral designs and motifs, common to the Islamic world, were prevalent in the Ottoman period. Thus her works are investigations of Turkish cultural history and its legacy, as seen in relationship to historical crafts, symbols and visual motifs – though placed within a contemporary context.

For the Biennial, Bingöl has created a series of works responding to today’s Istanbul, the global culture of surveillance, as well as to the tradition of ceramics and crafts. Works in the series Follower are experiments in dissemblance and stealth, in which tradition becomes a means of camouflage or disguise. Having observed that in the Tarlabasi neighborhood of Istanbul there was an increasing number of surveillance cameras, Bingöl covered a number of them with a ceramic pattern of flowers and garlands and placed them on the exteriors of buildings. The implicit weaponry of the surveillance camera is neutralised by the imagery of flowers, becoming fragile and even beautiful, and the decoration incorporates plants from the Beyoglu area of Istanbul, which is symbolic as a site of resistance.

Bingöl’s cameras track not only the spectator, inverting the relationship between viewer and viewed, but also the memory of public, social and environmental spaces. Even though its appearance is rapidly changing, Istanbul owes much to the historical legacy of craft. Bingöl’s work can be seen as an ode to these traditional techniques as well as a way of resisting or negating the technologies that are set against them in contemporary contexts.

Follower, 2017
Photo by Sahir Uğur Eren

Exhibited works

Follower, 2017
Ceramics, metal
Each 28 x 30 x 40 cm

Courtesy of the artist
Produced with the support of Zilberman Gallery and SAHA - Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey.

b. 1980, Zurich, Switzerland
lives in Berlin, Germany

How can we get along with one another? What does it mean to show empathy and care for the people around us, and how should we relate to our neighbours? In a world of reinforced borders, social and political atomisation, and rising distrust and fear, what does it mean to be a good neighbour?

Bridging commercial and art photography, Lukas Wassmann’s contribution to the Istanbul Biennial is an artwork that is simultaneously a billboard campaign. The project, made in collaboration with the curators Elmgreen & Dragset and graphic designer Rupert Smyth, presents a series of text and image reflections about what it means to be a good neighbour. Wassmann’s photographs are accompanied by some of the forty questions that the curators listed in their first curatorial statement, which seek to determine the aspects, subtleties and ethics involved in neighbourliness. The billboards serve as a conceptual intervention into public space, with works placed around the city, and with the collaboration of several institutions in Istanbul and in cities around the world.

The campaign operates ambiguously, with laconic humour, depicting specific scenarios in which people are forced or invited to enter into situations of proximity: an elderly man with groceries crossing paths with a man on a motorcycle, for instance, or a car driving past a figure standing in the cold. Alongside these images of everyday interactions, a series of questions investigate the expectations we place and habits we devise concerningthe people around us. How have behavioural norms changed around the world with globalisation and increased borders? Can co-existence be used as a political and personal mode of living and working? A related notion concerns the space in which these works are presented  – billboards normally used for commercial purposes, appropriated as a common ground for communal concerns.

The international billboard project takes place in Armagh, Ballynahinch, Belfast, Calgary, Chicago, Downpatrick, Dublin, Gwangju, Hamilton, Limerick, Liverpool, Ljubljana, Milan, Moscow, Newry, Plovdiv, Plymouth, Seoul, Southampton, Sydney, and Istanbul: Istanbul Modern, Pera Museum, ARK Kültür, Galata Greek Primary School, Yoğunluk Atelier, Küçük Mustafa Paşa Hammam.

Collaborators of the International Billboard Project
Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, Canada (Lorenzo Fusi); Art Sonje Center in Seoul, South Korea (Najung Kim, Kim Sunjung); Bermuda National Gallery in Hamilton, Bermuda (Lisa Howie); Biennale of Sydney, Australia (Ben Strout, Melissa Ratliff); EVA International and Limerick City Gallery of Art in Limerick, Northern Ireland (Emma Dwyer); Expo Chicago in Chicago, USA (Stephanie Cristello); Fondazione Prada in Milan, Italy (Daniele Manfre, Astrid Welter); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Russia (Iaroslav Volovod, Maria Kalinina); Goethe Institut Bulgaria in Plovdiv, Bulgaria (Stefka Tsaneva); Gwangju Biennale in Gwangju, South Korea (Junghun Yu, Ji Hyung Park, Mihee Ahn); International Centre of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, Slovenia (Nevenka Sivavec); John Hansard Gallery in Southhampton, UK (Woodrow Kernohan, Nadia Thondrayen); Liverpool Biennial in Liverpool, UK (Francesca Bertolotti-Bailey, Joanne Karcheva, Sally Tallant); St. Patrick Festival in Armagh, Ballynahinch, Belfast, Downpatrick and Newry, Northern Ireland (Sean Doran, Sara McGeary); The Atlantic Project in Plymouth, UK (Tom Trevor, Phil Rushworth)

International billboard project, Dublin, Ireland, 2017
Photo by Deirdre Power