The International Biennial in Istanbul is an exhibition of contemporary art organised every two years since 1987 by İstanbul Kültür Sanat Vakfı (İKSV). Turkey, being the meeting point of East and West as well as tradition and modernity, appeared to be the perfect place for melding artists and audiences of different origins. Every other year, the event transforms Istanbul into an international networking centre for artists, curators, and art critics, gathering together brand new trends in contemporary arts by the Black Sea. This year’s biennial will stand out from previous editions – the programme is selected not only by artists and curators but also scientists and philosophers. This year's curator is Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, a renowned American writer, art historian, and curator.
The main motif of this year’s biennial is saltwater. Thanks to this theme, the biennial is spreading out: it will be held on both land and water, on the European and Asian sides of the Bosphorus. Over 80 artists from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and South and North America will show over 1,500 works in museums, hotels, old garages, schools, private houses and gardens, and on boats and barges. The opening week will host nearly 5,000 guests from the international art scene.
After the spectacular success of last year’s cultural programme organised by Culture.pl which commemorated the 600th anniversary of Polish-Turkish diplomatic relations with over 160 cultural events and over half a million participants, the programme of this year’s Biennial had to include a Polish artist. Ania Soliman, an artist of Polish, American, and Egyptian origins, was selected for her extraordinary drawings.
Ania Soliman mainly creates drawings of various types. She also works with video, text and creates installations that join together all these elements. Her newest works focus on objects from anthropological collections. She studied at Harvard University, Columbia University, and the Whitney Independent Study Program. Her works have been exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, Artistic Space in New York, and at monographic exhibitions in New York and Basel.
For Soliman, saltwater, the main motif, connects all the senses – you can touch it, immerse yourself in it, taste it, smell it, listen to it. This multisensory experience will be the central element of her presented works. At Pera Museum, Soliman will show her older works as well as large-format drawings made especially for the biennial that will work together with the museum's permanent collection as an extraordinary installation.
Agnieszka Sural recently spoke to Ania Soliman about the event and her work:
How do you evaluate the conceptual frame of the Istanbul Biennial, “Saltwater”? How do you interpret this theme?
I really love it! It’s weirdly specific but connects up to many things. For me what it brings up is synaesthesia. Everyone has some kind of experience of saltwater: it is something that we can relate to with all of our senses. We can taste it, smell it, touch it, feel how it becomes sticky on the skin when it dries, and hear waves in the sea.
That interests me very much; that ideas can be experienced by the senses. So I try to combine the sensory with the conceptual in my work, to make them one thing.
Is your work related to the venue/space it is placed in? Did you choose this place? What did you take into consideration while deciding?
The space was chosen because it is a good match for the kind of work I do and a great space to show large drawings. The Pera Museum has an unusual, somewhat eccentric collection of weights, which relates to my interest in systems of exchange. Weights mediate and define equivalences so that exchanges will be regular and can be read as a metaphor for social relations of various kinds.
I am planning to make two works with those objects. One is a simple supplement to a drawing I made after an edict that announced the shift from the dirham to the metric system during Ottoman times. The other, tentatively called, We weighed things: 2000BC, is a temporary sculpture made up of objects, some heavy and hard to lift, and some quite exquisite and tiny, which make you wonder: what were they weighing with such miniscule weights 4000 years ago?
This year, the biennial is shaped by a large team of people including not only artists but also physicists, scientists, philosophers, etc. What do you think will be the effect of this plurivocality?
I think this kind of mix has been happening in art for a while now and its great to have it so clearly brought to the foreground.
For example, working with the weights connects to my fascination with what is happening at CERN, which has rightfully gotten so much attention. Humans have gotten together to build the largest machine in the world and use it to “weigh” the tiniest possible things that aren’t really things any more. And all this in order to find an elusive particle that supposedly allows mass to occur in the first place. Now this is very metaphysical, so to speak.
Such things can occur because of incredible specialization, but as a result of knowledge and life in general can feel very fragmented. So one of the things I am thinking about is a fictional or hypothetical institution that could allow connections to happen that can't easily happen under the current conditions. Art and artists are the perfect medium for cross-currents, but maybe this can be opened up even more.
The 14th Istanbul Biennial – SALTWATER: A THEORY OF THOUGHT FORMS - 5th September to 1st November.
Further information can be found at culture.pl