What better way to rally against the predictable trend of international \u00adcontemporary 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 \u00adcollective What, How & for Whom (WHW)\u2009\u2014\u2009Ivet C\u00b4urlin, Ana Devic\u00b4, Natasa Ilic\u00b4  and Sabina Sabolovic\u00b4\u2009\u2014\u2009the goal, in their words, was to \u201c... 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.\u201d<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Posted throughout the city in large, bold type is the question: \u201cWhat Keeps Mankind Alive?\u201d a song title borrowed from Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill\u2019s The Threepenny Opera<\/em> (1928). In its appropriated role as the \u00adbiennial\u2019s title, the question serves as an invocation\u2009\u2014\u2009a call for art to address fundamental questions of existence and function as a catalyst for social and political change. The song\u2019s lyrics read as a \u201cscript\u201d 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\u2019s political ef\ufb01cacy, the curators ask \u201cAnd why not? Isn\u2019t the question posed by Brecht equally urgent today?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This sense of urgency permeates the exhibition. The works are often strikingly direct in their approach, exhaustive in their display of information, and executed with an economy of means. One course of many through the exhibition can be charted through the metaphor of food alone. At the entrance to the main venue, Canan S\u00b8enol\u2019s video of engorged, lactating breasts slowly and incessantly drip milk (Fountain<\/em>, 2000). Jumana Emil Abboud smuggles all of the fruit from a lemon tree across the checkpoints between Jerusalem and Ramallah (Smuggling Lemons<\/em>, 2006) and captures it on raw video, revealing the exhaustive everyday reality of the border. Hans-Peter Feldmann\u2019s slice of brown bread, the centre eaten out, rests on a modest pedestal (Bread<\/em>, 2008). Larissa Sansour\u2019s documentary shows a family seated over a traditional meal of mloukhieh, their conversation quickly drifting from Palestinian food to the daily conditions of life under occupation (Soup Over Bethlehem<\/em>, 2006). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indeed, as an exhibition, the curators have deftly woven together the often separated politics of feminism, anti-capitalism, and social \u00addemocracy, with a combination of historical and current work that draws out lines of in\ufb02uence between artists of the 1960s and those of today, with the \u00admajority of artists hailing from the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Con\ufb02icting \u00adworldviews and positions abound. References to the aesthetics of socialist realism permeate the exhibition, both in the artwork and the exhibition promotion. In a global climate of unpredictable economies and radical shifts in power, this biennial is more relevant than ever, refreshing in its \u00adtransparency, curatorially concise, and remarkably bold in its call for art to address our most fundamental questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts,<\/strong> Istanbul
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