I was reminded recently, in a round-about way, after a brief meeting with an artist in Cape Town, of my visit to the 2019 Istanbul Biennial. The works on display across Istanbul were inventive and exceptional, but the visit to this great city turned out to be a terribly disappointing expedition. Istanbul never disappoints – which made this visit all the more disappointing.
The 2019 visit was difficult because I had to set aside my greater, interests, from the architectural majesty of the city to the small cafes, trendy and traditional…. I should mention that my 2018 visit to a “traditional” cafe was too smoky, but the corba ve taze ekmek did not disappoint, and I kind of liked being called Ismail Bey – although it was meaningless. It was a bit like the way I was called “Ismail Sir” by people from India….. Anyway, my bad chest could not take the punishment at visits to smokey old döner kebab dükkanı.
The 2019 visit kept me away from the streets where I used to roam; from Kadıköy (and along Baghdad Street) on the Anatolian side (and the Kadıköy Haldun Taner Stage!), to Beyoğlu (the BKM cultural complex and Besiktas Cultural Centre!)…. The other disappointment was that my favourite museum, the Istanbul Modern, was closed for renovations. I thought the person I was travelling with would, at least, be interested in the Istanbul Modern. So, that did not work out at all….
Anyway Istanbul is where I most enjoyed a type of flâneurie on a mission – without ever knowing what the mission was. I think that’s actually the purpose of the flaneur. Never mind.
Pictures and Picture Stories
I dug into my old storage drives and found sets of pictures of the people, mainly, on the streets of the city. People going to and from their places of work, or worship, the every day lives of people were the most intriguing in the sense that they were, or they are passages, that we all make every day.
The street vendors of the Fatih were a reminder of the durability of traditional traders, vendors, in the face of capitalist modernity, and the way that trade – as well as arts and craft, mind you – has been corralled into malls or “formal markets”. Street vendors in Asia, for instance (notably in Thailand and the Philippines, also Singapore, but that’s a whole new story, the places where I have, actually, experienced this) are identified as a “security threat,” and a threat to “public order” and control. This push to formalise trading tends to overlook the fact that street vendors rely on their sales for their livelihoods.
The picture of street vending I like the most is of a lonely vendor’s cart standing on the corner of a street in Fatih, with a massive truck entering the view…. One of the better lessons of photography is quiet observation (of surroundings) anticipation (of movement around you), and patience. I waited for this picture to come together.
I wasn’t terribly interested in visiting Taksim Square again, having previously visited the square in the northern summer of 2013. During an even earlier visit, I was much more interested in the Republic Monument on Taksim Square. For the most part, and during all my visits to Istanbul I avoided tourist places. In 2019, the square was visually underwhelming. I made the following picture of a street vendor. I had not gotten used to iPhone camera….
As for the rest of Taksim Square, what stood out, in 2019, was the Hollywood-themed imagery…. It’s hard to get away from all that, it seems.
One monument that held special meaning (very many of my parents and grandparents’ generation were tailors and craftspeople) was the Manifaturacı Draper Heykeli on a traffic island on Yeni Cami Street in Fatih.
About the 2019 Biennial
The 2019 Biennial was called The Seventh Continent, a reference to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, that vast accumulation of plastic waste and debris covering about 3.4 million square kilometres in the Pacific Ocean. The 2019 Istanbul Biennial explored the environmental impact of human activities, particularly the Anthropocene era, and the difficult and destructive relationship between nature and culture. I am insufficiently qualified or knowledgable to provide a detailed evaluation, review or critique of the artworks of the 2019 Biennial. And anyway most of my notes have long been filled away…
Below is a picture of Zhang Wang’s “Jia Shan Shi” (Artificial Rock). With the rock, Zhang Wang’s takes Chinese culture and philosophy as its inception point. The rock holds a special place, as metaphor, in China, as valuable parts of nature formed by geological processes. Chinese scholars and artists have used stones and rocks, themselves natures art works in gardens in cities, to represent connections between humans and nature, in the material and the spiritual sense.
With the Artificial Rock, Zhang Wang, shapes sheets of stainless steel around rocks and brings them together to create a smooth and polished, mirror-like surface, reflecting its surroundings and altering spatial perception. This, according to the artist urges the viewer to “refresh their imagination and change the direction of material and spiritual concepts”.With the Artificial Rock, Zhan Wang forms veins, voids, and curves and completes the conceptual transformation of the natural rock, shifting the existence of the rock “from imitating nature toward creating something artificial, thus enabling us to search for spirituality, which is traditional, in the reflection on the metal, which is real”.
The South African contribution was pleasantly surprising. From the accompanying texts, I gathered that the work of South African artist Turiya Magadlela represents is a series of giant tapestries made of tights, which covers the ceilings, resulting in a cave-like structure. She used tights to evoke racial and sexual discrimination, as well as femininity and eroticism. Her use of textiles calls attention to (skin) colour, with particular reference to South Africa, with strong allusions to black magic and fetish dolls. During the opening week of the Biennial, as a performance, Magadlela sewed tights on a sewing machine in the exhibition space, drawing attention to labour conditions, gender disparities, and intertwined histories of sexually and racially grounded violence and abuse. I did not get to see the performance, but made the following pictures of her exhibit at the Biennial.
I did not make notes about these underpants works…. nor of the snake.
My favourite installation was on Büyükada island on the Sea of Marmara, below. From my notes; this installation was of black obsidian mirrors in the gardens of a once stately mansion of the former Patriarch of Alexandria. In the garden, visitors look at their darkened reflections in the obsidian mirrors of Hale Tenger’s work, Suret, Zuhur, Tezahür (Appearance). All the while, across the ruins, a voice reads out a poem from the perspective of a tortured tree – scarred bark and iron pegs in its trunk: “They shamelessly pick my ripened fruit … I cannot go anywhere. Nor do I want to.” I found the installation hauntingly beautiful.
Ramazan Bayrakoglu uses an images in his visual archive, and transforms them, leading the viewer to contemplate concepts like exhaustion, disappearance and “the evanenscence of memories”. This, “Fire” has been reworked from the photograph of a house in flames, and represents an example of the artist “seeking perfection through his choice of material”.
Another work which had a special meaning (at least to me) was Günes Terkol’s installation that draws attention to stories, relationships, and social conditions, many of which were drawn from her own history and experiences as well as those of acquaintances experiences. She typically depicts modes of conforming and coping strategies used especially by women in ever changing social and cultural conditions of the contemporary world.
The cloth banner project “Against the Current” was created at a workshop Terkol organized with women who responded to her open call about Women’s Day during the “Signs Taken in Wonder” exhibition at MAK Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna during 2013.
“Against the Current” provided a poetic area where women could express their emotions. Terkol wove an image of the city of Vienna on the back of the banner, while portraying a group of women holding banners at a protest. During the MAK workshop, the women exchanged thoughts and ideas about a variety of subjects such as women’s rights, feminism, inequality and the patriarchal expressions found in proverbs. The group chose ten slogans, which they then collectively sewed onto banners, held by black women figures. The artwork demonstrates the struggles of women who persevere in defending their rights in the face of injustices hardships – and resistance.
Below, Ursula Mayer explores ideas of the post-human…. With one of the exhibits on Büyükada Island, you enter a grand room in the club house of a private yacht club, and you’re confronted with a LED screen on which the work is played out amid black panels and cables, the sibilance of cooling fans and blinking lights. The LED screen is placed in the typically grandiose, recency-style room to maximise a sense of the artwork’s intrusion into the space.
The display depicts an animation of an avatar holding a flame. The figure, based on trans model Valentijn de Hingh, a sometime collaborator of the artist, is shown in a seamless looping movement in constant liminality. The work brings to the fore the intersections between technology, mythology and the human body
Below is Radcliffe Bailey’s exhibit Nommo was stirring. The large-scale sculpture is a recreation of the structure of a ship – eight plaster busts are placed in the ship structure – built with reclaimed wooden beams found in the shipyards of Istanbul, which attempts to “connect past and present”. The work was exhibited almost exactly where Sun Ra performed on Istanbul’s Istiklal Street nearly twenty years earlier, Nommo features the afro-futurist Arkestra’s music as one of three audio elements.
Music plays a large role in Bailey’s practice, as his singular visual language takes form in a variety of references and riffs. Bailey uses recording of ship builders and ocean waves in the Bay of Soumbédioune, Senegal and an original jazz composition which he co-created, and are integrated into the once site-specific installation.
In allowing the viewer several entry points to his work through the use of indefinite time, space, and material, the artist raises questions about the point where “narratives begin and when they may come to an end”.
James Baldwin in Istanbul
The absolute highlight of the Biennial was the Short film of, “James Baldwin: From Another Place,” made by Sedat Pakay in Istanbul in 1973. The film shows Baldwin walking amongst the crowds in Taksim Square to a voiceover of him talking about living abroad, aspects of his private life and the black experience in America. I made a short video clip, but this Youtube Video is much better.
Noise and craziness
Setting the artworks aside. An earlier visit to Istanbul included attendance of a Galatasaray football . match. It was not exactly a pleasant experience. I made the mistake of asking where the travelling (away) fans sat.
The reply was to the point” We don’t allow them in our stadium”. Charming.
