The Istanbul Biennial has announced the list of 82 artists and collectives who will participate in the 17th edition, set to take place 17 September to 20 November 2022. The list also includes artists and contributors taking part in the biennial’s catalogue and the film programme, which will unfold over the course of two years. The event’s curators, Ute Meta Bauer, Amar Kanwar and David Teh, said they hoped to make it ‘a massively conversational biennial’ by developing a programme of some 50-plus talks, screenings and workshops stretching beyond the traditional timeframe of the festival. A 25-episode weekly radio programme was also launched on 30 May, in collaboration with Radio Bienal, running in the lead up to the opening.
The curators haven’t announced a theme or title for the biennial, instead expressing in a curatorial statement their view of the city-wide exhibition as ‘composting’ allowing artists to ‘make sense of our times – of this planetary dysfunction we created and must face together’. ‘Rather than mounting a spectacle,’ they added, ‘we aim to inspire accommodation, connecting existing sites of civic and cultural exchange, activating others that are underutilised or dormant.’ The sites in question will include traditional venues such as the Pera Museum and the 15th-century Turkish bath, the Küçük Mustafa Paşa Hammami, alongside new ones, among which the international performance art platform Performistanbul Live Art Research Space (PCSAA); a former Greek high-school for girls from the late nineteenth century; the artist residency SAHA Studio; a 130-year-old power plant recently converted into a museum, Müze Gazhane; an art space founded by Syrian artists, arthereistanbul; the atelier of a calligrapher and book-binding artist Barın Han; one of the earliest hammams, The Çinili Hamam; a medicinal plants garden in Zeytinburnu; a metro tunnel under Taksim Square and over 80 second-hand bookshops, cafes and hospitals across the city.
The list of participating artists is as follows, and will be updated regularly:
Catalogue contributors*
Film programme contributors**
1. Lida Abdul
2. Açık Radyo
3. Anne(x)
4. Arahmaiani
5. Arazi Assembly and Topological Atlas
6. atelier d’architecture autogérée
7. Pustaka Bergerak
8. Atıf Akın
9. Adlaw Sang Mananagat Fisherfolks’ Day
10. Tarek Atoui
11. John Bell
12. Rustom Bharucha*
13. Bread and Puppet Theater
14. Çiğdem Buğdaycı*
15. Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel**
16. Carlos Casas
17. Cooking Sections
18. Crip Magazine
19. Danarto dkk
20. Devenir Universidad
21. Disobedience Archive [Ders Bitti]
22. Övül Durmuşoğlu*
23. Dumpling Post
24. Greg Dvorak*
25. École du soir in Istanbul: Archives sonores de la litérature noire
26. Marcelo Expósito**
27. Feminist Memory Project
28. Ângela Ferreira
29. Footsteps
30. INLAND
31. Green Papaya
32. Anamika Haksar**
33. Newell Harry
34. David Harvey*
35. Taloi Havini
36. Fang-tze Hsu**
37. INTERPRT
38. In time / On Ground
39. Lamia Joreige
40. Elif Kamışlı*
41. Payal Kapadia**
42. Gülsün Karamustafa
43. Dictionary of Sensitive Sounds
44. KONDA
45. Renato Leotta
46. Charles Lim and Simryn Gill
47. Mariah Lookman
48. Michael Marder*
49. Ruth McDougall*
50. Angela Melitopoulos and Kerstin Schroedinger
51. Alice Miceli
52. Migrant Ecologies Projects**
53. Carl Mika*
54. Nakamura Yuta
55. Mark Nash and Vladimir Seput**
56. Our-history-is-not-found-in-a-book
57. Nguyên Trinh Thi**
58. Marian Pastor Roces*
59. Zozan Pelivhan*
60. Maria Puig de la Bellacasa*
61. Pere Portabella**
62. Pathshala South Asian Media Institute
63. Poetry Channel
64. Pratchaya Phinthong with Chairat Polmuk
65. Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook
66. Ella Raidel**
67. Lisa Rave**
68. Riar Rizaldi**
69. SAHA Studio
70. Tita Salina and Irwan Ahmett
71. Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam**
72. Shapono
73. Lieko Shiga
74. Sim Chi Yin
75. Silent University Orientation Programme
76. Catarina Simão
77. Yehwan Song
78. Sriwhana Spong
79. Orkan Telhan
80. What are the birds thinking?
81. Chikako Yamashiro**
82. Yee I-Lann
