Istanbul Biennial 2019: The Seventh Continent Istanbul’s art scene is booming and it’s never been more evident than in this year’s 16th Biennial (14 September – 10 November). Running across three sites, and showcasing more than 220 artworks by 56 participating artists, it provides art lovers with a wealth of opportunities to fully immerse themselves in art. This year’s theme – The Seventh Continent The Seventh Continent refers to the mass of plastic waste floating in the Pacific, estimated to be five times the size of Turkey. Curator and art historian Nicolas Bourriaud uses this theme to explore the Anthropocene epoch; an era where human activity has been the dominant influence on climate change and the environment. While the biennial isn’t set on preaching an environmental message, it explores our current period in history and suggests a new ‘approach is needed to make sense of it. Bourriaud sees the 56 international participating artists as anthropologists of this ‘off-centred world’, a time where, the physical and symbolic limits that formerly separated human beings from their environments have collapsed. He suggests that,’ both anthropology and art are reflecting the erosion of the old mass systems – sociological, ethnical, sexual or political.’ The site locations Site 1 Located a stone’s throw from the beautiful Bosphorous and a 30-minute walk from Galata Bridge, the main venue (the new addition to the MSFAU Painting and Sculpture museum), plays host to more than half of the participating artists, so ensure you allow a day to take it all in. It’s also conveniently located for grabbing a coffee or a quick bite to eat, should you want some refreshments after an art-filled day. Site 2 The second host venue, the Pera Museum, is more centrally located near Taksim Square. Here, alongside the 14 Biennial artists, is the museum’s permanent collection, which is well worth viewing. Afterwards, head to Solera Winery, a fabulous little wine bar with a good selection of wines. Site 3 The third site, which is home to five art works, is located on Buyukada (the largest of the Princes Islands), situated a one-hour boat ride from the main port. All of the works are located within a short walk from the ferry drop-off for ease. To help inspire your visit to the Biennial, I’ve rounded up a few of my favourite installations / artists’ works. 1. Korakrit Arunanondchai – Thailand This video piece brings together two historical events – the rise of Donald Trump and the death of the King of Thailand woven together with the artist’s grandmother’s experience with dementia and a drone spirit called Chanti. Done through a collage of cleverly woven interviews, original footage, imagery and story-telling, there’s a real beauty to Arunanondchai’s work, which has an ethereal and spiritual quality. The content of the video is almost irrelevant; it’s the sum of the parts that makes it stand out. He punctuates the footage with poignant phrases, which encourage reflection such as: ‘how have the strokes of history painted your picture’, ‘for consciousness to exist beyond bodies’, ‘soil is the most valued species on the earth,’ etc. 2. Jonathas de Andrade – BrazilPeixe The Fish– video This powerful film shows a fisherman holding and stroking a fish with care and love while the fish slowly dies; a ritual performed by fishermen in the Northeast of Brazil. This demonstration of love while the fishermen knowingly kill the fish for food, throws up a complex set of emotions, making for compelling yet difficult viewing. Andrade uses this video to explore human’s relationship to the earth, that we are slowly killing yet depend on for our existence. 3. Hale Tenger – Turkey Appearance –Installation and audio - Buyukada This meditative piece is set in the gardens of Sophronius Palace, a now un-inhabited, dilapidated building on Buyukada Island. As you wander around the gardens you are drawn to the black obsidian mirrors that reflect the magic of this wild garden. You are forced to walk slowly in between the mirrors so you can hear the audio that forms part of this installation, a poem written by the artist – the voice of a fruit tree. The inspiration for this installation comes from a botanical technique girdling: the complete removal of a strip of bark which can kill trees or encourage enhanced growth of fruit. The artist asks ‘Can you be by not doing?’ and she creates a wonderful space to reflect on this and indeed how humans manipulate nature for their own gain. 4. Haegue Yang – South Korea ‘Incubation and Exhaustion’- sculpture, sound (Painting and Sculpture Museum) Yang presents an immersive sensorial environment with scents, sounds and textures. The room is saturated with biomorphic sculptures made up of motifs ranging from chillies and garlic to high-end surgical robots. These striking hyperreal images and sculptures are paired with an audio from a famous interview with Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in, where native bird song and camera clicks was all that was recorded. Yang’s installation explores the breaking down of barriers between technology, politics, art and nature. Overall, the experience left me feeling reflective. Perhaps human beings are merely a dot on the landscape of the history of this great earth whose time is up. Motivated by human-centric concerns, the climate change debate, which has provoked so much discussion and anxiety, maybe suggests our focus should be on how to leave this earth gracefully.
Elinor Seath
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One of the best known visual arts prizes in the world, The Turner Prize is awarded annually to an artist born, living or working in Britain, for an outstanding exhibition or public presentation of their work anywhere in the world in the previous year.
This year's Turners prize finalists take a look at feminist science fiction, sound as a forensic tool, the role of women in the civil rights movement in Derry in 1964 and collective conscience. This heady mix is explored through painting, sculpture, installation, film and digital imagery. To get you excited or this year's Turner Prize, here’s a snapshot of the four finalists and their work. LAWRENCE ABU HAMDAN Lawrence Abu Hamdan is an artist and audio investigator, whose work explores ‘the politics of listening’ and the role of sound and voice within the law and human rights. His work features a series of three pieces on a loop using audio-video installations, audio archives and speech to text algorithm. He explores the use of sound in a forensic context. Specifically, he was asked by Amnesty International to work with six survivors from Saydnaya a Syrian prison which, since the Syrian revolution of 2011 turned into a Centre for torture and execution and where speaking became punishable by death. Abu Hamdan conducted ‘earwitness’ interviews, using sound to elicit their experiences in the prison and build up an account of what actually happened during this time. His works include, Saydnaya a light box that visually presents how the prisoners voices became after the Syrian Revolution and suggests that a silent whisper can be as telling as a spoken testimony. Walled Unwalled is a video piece lasting 20 minutes which looks at different cases where evidence is heard or experienced through walls. After SFX is 25-minute text to algorithm piece which looks at the role of the Foley artist in creating sounds that can spark a memory or evoke an emotion. HELEN CAMMOCK Her 1 hour and 39-minute video ‘The Long Note’, is an eclectic interwoven series of interviews, songs, prose and original footage exploring the role of women in the civil rights movement in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1968. She relates this to the global struggles for equality in the 1960s, in particular the feminist and African American civil rights movements in the United States. Cammock also presents ‘Shouting in Whispers’ a series of simple, evocative text-based prints using quotes from political activist Claudia Jones and Public Enemy. Cammock also provides a sit-down library space to encourage visitors to further research the civil rights movements. OSCAR MURILLO Oscar's installation features a striking scene of 23 human sized papier mache effigies sitting on benches, waiting, looking onto a black canvas. Each effigy has a different gormless expression all dressed for work. This is Murillo’s Collective Conscience work, a reflection on migration, globalization and the political and socio-economic position of our world today. The black canvas the effigies are seemingly looking on to, which blocks out the view of The North Sea, reflects the darkness and the ignorance of this moment. Behind the pews of figures Murillo presents Surge- social cataracts, a series of ethereal abstract paintings representing the desire to be immersed in an idealized world view and ignore the state of the real world. Alongside this, Murillo is running a project for local schools, 'Frequencies', where he has distributed canvases that will be fixed to students’ desks for six months with an open invite for students to write or draw whatever they want. TAI SHANI This immersive installation presents a bright pink luscious fantastical city, with soft giant forms hanging from the ceiling, reflective spheres, puddles of nature and a huge green hand that sits in the middle. It’s a real feast for the eyes as Shani uses an eclectic mix of materials and forms to create her saturated world. On the floor there are 12 pairs of busy animated miniature hands, which represent the mythical and real female characters which form the basis of the words spoken by the head on a screen. The dialogue, which you listen to on the headphones provided, is sometimes violent and erotic - so adults only – is a reading from Shani’s book ‘Our Fatal Magic,’ which uses the 12 female characters to explore and anticipate a post-patriarchal world. If you've never been to Margate, there are plenty of other activities in addition to the Turner Prize, to take in, thanks to the Margate Now Festival, a programme of exhibitions, events, educational projects and performances running from now until 12 January 2020. Elinor Seath |
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