The rejection of Defne Ayas as curator of the 2024 biennial in favour of Iwona Blazwick reveals the growing limitations of inventive freedom in Turkey
On 3 August, the Istanbul Tradition and Arts Basis (IKSV) introduced Iwona Blazwick, the previous director of the Whitechapel Gallery in London, because the curator of subsequent 12 months’s Istanbul Biennial, scheduled to run from 14 September to 17 November 2024. ‘We’re delighted that Iwona Blazwick has accepted our invitation to curate the 18th Istanbul Biennial. Her depth of expertise and her lengthy affiliation with the Biennial make her a great selection to steer the workforce for 2024’, the inspiration said in an announcement. Blazwick’s curatorial framework and artist record for the biennial are as but unannounced. Extra curiously, nevertheless, the IKSV additionally selected to not reveal the names of the Istanbul Biennial advisory board members who appointed Blazwick – the primary time in a decade that these haven’t been made public.
For the reason that Istanbul Biennial’s inception in 1987, the rules of democracy, plurality, hybridity and cultural dialogue have been highlighted and championed by its curators, and it has seen hundreds of thousands of holiday makers through the years. The members of the advisory board remained largely unknown till 2010 when IKSV started publishing their names. That 12 months, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Ayşe Erkmen, Melih Fereli, Hou Hanru, and Jack Persekian picked Adriano Pedrosa & Jens Hoffman’s project for the twelfth edition of the biennial. When it was introduced in 2020 that Ute Meta Bauer, Amar Kanwar, and David Teh would curate the final version of the Biennial, the names of the advisory board who appointed them have been made public: Iwona Blazwick, Ayşe Erek, Yuko Hasegawa, Agustín Pérez Rubio, and Levent Çalıkoğlu. Against this, the opacity of this 12 months’s choice course of has led to the formation of an initiative comprising a gaggle of artists, researchers and artwork professionals who demand transparency. I used to be invited to affix and have become a silent observer because the initiative contacted members of the Biennial’s advisory board and the curators who pitched proposals for the subsequent version to piece collectively what appeared a baffling puzzle.
Blazwick herself, the group discovered, was a part of the advisory board that was tasked with deciding on a curator for the 2024 version. As a personal basis, there may be after all nothing within the IKSV’s mandate that requires them to fee a undertaking really useful by the advisory board. There’s additionally nothing to cease the inspiration from selecting a board member as one among their curators; whereas they’ve accomplished so up to now, this was solely after these members had already left the board (together with Christov-Bakargiev and Ute Meta Bauer). What makes Blazwick’s case distinctive is that she was a member of the very board that was dismissed earlier than the inspiration appointed her. Talking on behalf of the transparency initiative, video artist Köken Ergun and curator Merve Elveren informed me the members of the initiative are nonetheless ready to study from IKSV if there’s a grace interval or moratorium – customary practices to keep away from moral questions concerning the choice course of – on former board members making use of as curators for the biennial. “It’s essential to stress that whereas the IKSV is a personal basis, they’ve a public mandate and therefore public accountability”, they added. “They use personal and public funding for his or her exhibitions, applications, initiatives and analysis. Additionally they have a longstanding analysis program in cultural coverage with clear public stakes. We ask these questions as a result of all of us need IKSV and the Istanbul Biennial to be extra public, trusted, inclusive and clear.”
The advisory board for the choice strategy of the eighteenth Istanbul Biennial comprised curators Agustin Pérez Rubio and Yuko Hasegawa; artwork historian and curator Selen Ansen; Turkish-Armenian artist Sarkis; and Blazwick. In December 2022, 5 curators have been invited to ship their proposals for the 2024 version. The board unanimously really useful the proposal of Defne Ayas in late January 2023 and knowledgeable the IKSV Biennial Administration of their resolution. A lot to their dismay, nevertheless, the administration workforce notified the board that they’d not have the ability to proceed with their curator of selection; the administration additionally refused to fee the opposite proposals. Agustin Pérez Rubio resigned from his function on the board in protest, arguing that the method lacked transparency. Quickly afterwards, Selen Ansen and the artist Sarkis additionally resigned from the board, sharing Rubio’s considerations; in response to my e-mail, Ansen confirmed her resignation. “I don’t suppose it’s applicable for me to touch upon this, besides that I resigned from the IKSV Advisory Board after IKSV appointed Iwona Blazwick because the curator of the 2024 Biennial”, she mentioned. “I despatched my resignation to the IKSV administration, and different Advisory Board members in an e-mail which options my causes for doing so.” Over the next days, an answer was discovered by dismissing the advisory board for the 2024 Biennial. Of their stead, the IKSV Administration appointed Blazwick as the subsequent curator as an alternative of Ayas. Of their correspondence with me, the IKSV didn’t dispute this chronology of occasions.
The final director of IKSV Görgün Taner informed me that it was not the advisory board however the IKSV themselves who chosen Blazwick. “The choice to nominate Ms. Blazwick was taken by IKSV additional to the non-acceptance of the recommendation of the Advisory Board by IKSV. It’s to be famous that the Advisory Board provides recommendation which isn’t nevertheless binding and IKSV could act independently of such recommendation.” He added: “Ms. Blazwick’s work is extremely revered by IKSV as she is an internationally famend curator with huge information of latest artwork and deep information of the context in Turkey due to her expertise within the Advisory Board from which she stepped down. IKSV at the moment deemed that it’s a second by which to appoint a world curator to steer the subsequent version artistically.” Following the dismissal of a board that she was herself a part of, Blazwick selected to not assist Ayas however as an alternative to just accept her personal nomination as curator. This appears a troubling and professionally unethical resolution.
Seven months have now handed for the reason that controversial board conferences, and the problem has resurfaced following IKSV’s announcement final week. Curator Duygu Demir demanded answers: ‘Iwona Blazwick, the curator of the upcoming Istanbul Biennial, has consecutively served on the biennial’s advisory board in 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2022. We’re questioning: Who’re the members of the advisory board this 12 months? Why have these names not been publicly shared but? Is Blazwick nonetheless a part of the board? Has she chosen herself?!? If that’s the case, did she submit a proposal like others in accordance with the invitational format, earlier than being chosen?’ On 6 August, the Turkish arts web site Sanatatak joined in. Quickly, Turkish social media was ablaze.
Defne Ayas said to me her hope that these developments pave the best way for a extra clear choice course of and a dialogue-based artwork ecology within the metropolis; she has chosen to donate her proposal-phase price from IKSV to charities supporting restoration in Turkey’s earthquake zone. Ayas is at the moment engaged on an upcoming exhibition with Sarkis at Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, which can open on 27 October. One can solely speculate that her potential collaboration with IKSV in 2024 could have brought on unease in some circles because of pre-election political sensitivities in Turkey. Such tensions might also have taken root in 2015, the 12 months of Ayas’s earlier partnership with the inspiration. In 2014, the IKSV chosen Sarkis for the Turkey Pavilion on the 72nd Venice Biennial; Sarkis picked Defne Ayas to work with him as curator. The resultant set up, Respiro, celebrated the legacy of the slain Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. An accompanying exhibition catalogue featured essays by Ayas, David Kazanjian and Wendy Meryem Kural Shaw, in addition to a textual content by Dink’s widow, Rakel, who referred to the Armenian genocide to explain the ache suffered by her individuals. IKSV organizes the Turkey Pavilion for the artwork and structure editions of the Venice Biennale, with the assist of the Ministry of International Affairs and the Ministry of Tradition and Tourism. In 2015, the Turkish Ministry of Tradition reacted to the booklet’s publication by blocking its distribution because of political sensitivities. Cumhuriyet newspaper reported the controversy, however there was little additional protection of the problem in Turkey.
It doesn’t bode nicely for Turkey’s artwork scene that resignations from the advisory board occurred seven months in the past in January however have been by no means publicised. If IKSV have been to ultimately veto with out rationalization Ayas’s proposal, which was unanimously chosen, then why did they invite her to submit a proposal within the first place? In the event that they received’t take heed to the advisory board, why have they got one in any respect? It additionally raises institutional questions. Ergun and Elveren, from the transparency initiative, imagine that “a reputable and inclusive institutional observe concerning the choice of the curators requires that IKSV continues to announce the advisory board members, be clear concerning the choice course of, and stay open and conscious of criticism and reply to enquiries for transparency and accountability. We hope that this dialogue will proceed within the coming years”. In Turkey, calls for for institutional transparency are rooted in fears a couple of pervasive political silence that will quickly take the nation hostage, notably as authorities strain on the fields of arts and tradition continues to develop. These calls for and considerations are elementary in public life; the artworld should decide to adopting them if inventive freedom of expression is to be protected for the long run.
Kaya Genç is a journalist and novelist from Istanbul. His most up-to-date e-book is The Lion and the Nightingale: A Journey By way of Fashionable Turkey, 2019