A Guide to the 18th Istanbul Biennial
What it's all about, facts at a glance, and venue-by-venue top picks.
As the sun baked down on the crowd assembled for the press preview of the 18th Istanbul Biennial on Tuesday, curator Christine Tohmé spoke passionately about the “dark chapter of history” in which the world is embroiled, saying that the victims of global conflicts are the ones who inform her work and calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza.
“This biennial is being presented at a time when life itself is under siege,” Tohmé said. “To preserve the self is to recognize its entanglement with others, human and nonhuman alike. We need to slow down and think about what we can still do with our art practices in this world we live in to respond to social crises.”
The Istanbul Biennial, which has been organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) since 1987, is in its own state of slowdown. The last biennial was held in 2022, somewhat subdued by the recent Covid-19 pandemic as well as Turkey’s economic crisis. This edition was delayed by a year after a controversy over the selection process to pick the next curator, and Tohmé’s “three-legged” concept will extend the 18th biennial across three years, with a focus on public programs in 2026, followed by a culminating exhibition in 2027.
The “first leg” of the biennial, which opens to the public on Saturday, features works by 47 artists, a relatively modest group, displayed in a similarly small part of the city, a “walkable geography” as Tohmé puts its, within the Beyoğlu district, historically the heart of Istanbul’s arts and culture scene. A Lebanese curator who spoke at the opening about hearing blasts from Israeli airstrikes while having Zoom calls about the biennial in her Beirut home, Tohmé has perhaps unsurprisingly selected many artists from the Middle East – including Gaza and the Palestinian diaspora – as well as other parts of what is often referred to as the Global South.
Many works on display address issues such as environmental destruction, indigenous traditions (and their appropriation), migration, invisible labor, conflict, and memory, though often with a lighter touch than one might expect for such heavy topics. And after what felt like an archive-dense 17th Istanbul Biennial, more immersive installations and fewer text-based works make for a welcome (and more welcoming) change.
Given the increasingly constrained atmosphere for free speech, it’s unsurprising if unfortunate that a biennial so vocal about the world’s problems says almost nothing about issues within Turkey itself: growing authoritarianism; repression of women, the LGBTQ community, and minorities; and jailing of political opponents. Those behind bars include the mayor of Istanbul and the mayor of Beyoğlu, whose administration manages the very venue – the garden of a former French orphanage – where the press preview speeches took place this week.
And although Tohmé nodded to the “continual threat of gentrification and commodification” facing artistic communities, and spoke proudly of how the biennial has revitalized historic buildings in Beyoğlu, these venues’ sanitized interior spaces provided disappointingly little hint of their past for the artworks to engage with.
Art, of course, is extremely subjective, and while no works this year really stopped me in my tracks, there weren’t many complete duds either. Regardless of the criticisms it may provoke, the biennial is always worth engaging with. Keep reading below for my venue-by-venue picks and let me know in the comments what artists and works you think visitors to the Istanbul Biennial shouldn’t miss.
The 18th Istanbul Biennial at a Glance
What: An international exhibition of contemporary art, featuring works by 47 artists curated by Lebanese curator Christine Tohmé
Where: Eight venues in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district, all within a short walk of the Tophane tram stop
When: 20 September to 23 November; venues open daily except Mondays 10am to 6pm (during the first week only, the biennial will be open on Monday, 22 September). The Garden of the Former French Orphanage is open daily from 9am to 11pm.
How: Free entry, no registration required; guided tours cost 1000 to 1500 TL, are limited to 20 people, and can be booked in advance online or at the ticket desks in the Galata Greek School and Zihni Han.
Tips: The biennial guidebook (on sale for 450 TL) makes for a nice souvenir, but most of the information within it is repeated on the wall texts. The guided tours, IMO, are not worth the price as the young guides, hardworking and eagerly earnest as they are, appear to have only been taught to recite the descriptions from the book/texts.
For more information: https://bienal.iksv.org/en
Venue-by-Venue Top Picks
Though there is no set plan designated for visiting the biennial, I suggest starting your artsy excursion while your energy levels are at their peak at Zihni Han, which hosts a third of all of the artists featured in the biennial over its seven floors. Start on the top-floor terrace for its panoramic view of the city and Marwan Rechmaoui’s sculptures of oversized toys, which are fun to look at (and in some cases play with) even if his broader concept of games as a way of establishing social hierarchies doesn’t really come through.
On the fifth floor, Sohail Salem’s pen-and-ink notebook drawings, Diaries from Gaza, powerfully depict life under siege while Abdullah Al Saadi’s Stone Slippers allude to environmental transformation in the Gulf region. On the fourth floor, Elif Saydam’s curtain-like installation of laminated plastic sheets invites questioning of who is included in and excluded from Hospitality. On the third floor, explore the history of a Paris nightclub through the voices of diverse communities that found a home there in Valentin Noujaïm’s film Pacific Club, and meditate on resistance and destruction in Chen Ching-Yuan’s skillful paintings. (I’ll come back here to see what Selma Selman incorporates into the gallery from her electronic-waste-smashing live performance this week.)
Skip the second floor (an open space/mini library), but don’t miss the first floor for Jasleen Kaur’s My Body is a Temple of Gloom, a humorous take on the appropriation of spiritual practices. End your visit to Zihni Han with a restorative immersion in Celina Eceiza’s colorful, cushion-covered textile installation on the ground floor – the entrance is on the corner of the building, to the left of the main entrance.
After a short rest, take a 10-minute stroll to Meclis-i Mebusan 35, dominated by two eye-catching installations, including one of my favorite pieces of the whole biennial, Pilar Quinteros’ Working Class, which reimagines a statue of a worker erected in 1973 in nearby Tophane Park that was repeatedly vandalized until it was completely removed. Next walk back to Külah Fabrıkası, a former ice-cream cone factory, where Doruntina Kastrati’s installation A Horn That Swallows Songs evokes the repetition and low-level sensory assault experienced by factory workers, drawing from the artist’s video interviews with women employed by candy manufacturers of lokum (Turkish delight).
Fuel up with a bite to eat now or after a visit to two small venues facing each other across a narrow street. The Muradiye Han hosts Ana Alenso’s installation What the Mine Gives, the Mine Takes, based on the artist’s research into the environmental impacts of gold mining in Venezuela (though one wishes the threat posed by mining in Turkey’s Kazdağları and Cerattepe regions might have at least merited a mention). The Galeri 77 venue (not to be confused with the nearby gallery of the same name) meanwhile is home to Dilek Winchester’s investigations into alphabets and languages historically used in Turkey and Haig Aivazian’s nocturnal cartoons, fittingly screening on the basement floor.
The Galata Rum Okulu (Galata Greek School), about five minutes away on foot, is another artist-dense venue that will take some time to visit. Most exhibitions are in the main building, but don’t miss the balcony floor above the foyer, where Ayman Zedani’s recorded whale songs play in a salt-covered brick chamber. In the main building, I was most drawn to Naomi Rincón-Gallardo’s surreal video Opossum Resilience and the wild costumes used it in, along with Seta Manoukian’s powerful paintings speaking to the emotional strain of living through conflict (both on the third floor).
There’s only one artist installation at the Eski Fransız Yetimhanesi Bahçesi (Garden of the Former French Orphanage) but the pleasant setting makes a good pit stop on the steep 15-minute walk uphill to the final biennial venue, the Elhamra Han, a former theater hall and cinema. The works exhibited on its upper floors are generally quite strong, including Şafak Şule Kemancı’s playfully erotic, many-tentacled sculpture; Sevil Tunaboylu’s paintings drawing on her family history; Lara Saab’s botanical sketches; and Mona Benyamin’s satirical, cathartic video work.
Still want more art? There’s also a long list (so far only in Turkish) of parallel exhibitions around the city during the timeframe of the biennial. Look for more details on some of these shows in upcoming newsletters.
Love how you built a route, contextualized the exhibition and recommended works to see!
Amazing guide and tips! I am going tomorrow to do exactly this tour starting from The Greek school.