Istanbul Biennial 2011

Wael Shawky Cabaret Crusades The Horror Show File 201o

This is the beginning of my analysis of the Istanbul Biennial which has the title “untitled” based on the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who titled his work “Untitled” then added a parenthesis with a particular reference. In the Istanbul Biennial 2011, the curators made five group shows with the following references untitled(abstraction), untitled(Ross), untitled (history) untitled (passport), untitled (guns). The overall theme was the possibility of undermining the distance of modernism with political contexts. The range of political content went from extremely literal to absolutely abstract. Indeed the exhibition is a veritable encylopedia of different ways of examing the possible relationships of art and politics. I will write more about the specific art work in the next entry.

For now, the overall effect was that of a lot of historical art that was modernist, paired with contemporary artists recontextualizing historical modernism, or reinventing it. There were very few artists from the U.S., and none of the usual familiar names except Martha Rosler ( but the curators chose to show her earlier Vietnam series, rather than her recent series on the Iraq war.

For now, I will comment on the image above as indicative of the “new world order” ( how antiquated that idea is, and yet, there is indeed a new world order, and the US is not at the center of it). This Egyptian artist is using 200 year old marionettes to tell the story of the Crusades from the Arab perspective in a video of a marionette show. The video was in Arabic with Turkish subtitles. No English. That was exciting in itself. The narrative centered around the brutality of the Crusaders.It was riveting.

More to come on specific works.