REVIEW

contemporary manifestos
 

The title of the 11th Istanbul Biennial, What Keeps Mankind Alive?, is owed to a song title of the same name from the 1928 The Threepenny Opera written by German poet, playwright and theatre director Bertolt Brecht. The Biennial's title does the intended trick: the audience seeks to answer this question; the command is in the asking, not the answering, and that is precisely what the curatorial collective What, How and for Whom (WHW), comprised of Ivet Curlin, Ana Devi, Natasa Ilic and Sabina Sabolovic, the foursome behind the Biennial, want. Given that the title had people wondering, it certainly confused some, whose answer to 'what keeps mankind alive?' was in stark contrast to the Biennial's rather dark and dominant feel.

"Mankind is alive with beauty and that is absent from the Biennial," noted Nazila Noebashari, Director of Tehranbased Aaran Art Gallery who was in Istanbul in a show of support for two of her artists, Jinoos Taghizadeh and Shahab Fotouhi, the only two Iranians showing at the Biennial. "The answer would have to be freedom; this is what keeps all of us alive and what links us," added Andrée Sfeir-Semler of Galerie Sfeir-Semler, whose artists - Marwan (see Canvas Volume 4 Issue 6), Rabih Mroué, Wafa Hourani and Anna Boghiguian - contributed significantly to a piece of the Middle Eastern art representation pie. In total, of the 70 artists at the Biennial, 13 are from the Middle East. That is greater than the number of Turkish artists showing at the Biennial, a point that Noebashari raised. Is it an unwritten rule that a Biennial's home country should show more of its national artistic wares?

Strewn across the floors of the Biennial's three spaces - the Antrepo No 3 warehouse, the Feriköy Greek School and the Tütün Deposu (Tobacco Warehouse) - were the crumpled red sheets...