The 11th International Istanbul Biennial

What better way to rally against the predictable trend of international ­contemporary art biennials than to curate an exhibition that is tightly focussed, anti-spectacular and unapologetically political? The 11th International Istanbul Biennial does just that. Curated by the Zagreb ­collective What, How & for Whom (WHW) — Ivet C´urlin, Ana Devic´, Natasa Ilic´  and Sabina Sabolovic´ — the goal, in their words, was to “... rethink the biennial as a meta-device with the potential to facilitate the renewal of critical thinking by extracting thought from the immediate artistic and political context where it takes place.”

Posted throughout the city in large, bold type is the question: “What Keeps Mankind Alive?” a song title borrowed from Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera (1928). In its appropriated role as the ­biennial’s title, the question serves as an invocation — a call for art to address fundamental questions of existence and function as a catalyst for social and political change. The song’s lyrics read as a “script” for the exhibition, narrating its themes: unequal distribution of wealth and power, war and oppression, food and hunger, and social responsibility. At risk of seeming overly idealistic in the belief in art’s political efficacy, the curators ask “And why not? Isn’t the question posed by Brecht equally urgent today?”