Last 2 days to visit 15th Istanbul Biennial including works by Heba Y. Amin, Burçak Bingöl and Pedro Gómez-Egaña (16/11/2017)


Heba Y. Amin

Heba Y. Amin’s film “As Birds Flying” (2016) hones in on the normalization of doubt and paranoia in a world of political unrest and absolute surveillance. In 2013, a migratory stork with a tracking device attached to its right leg was taken into custody in Egypt on suspicion of espionage. Amin’s work, which can be viewed at the Galata Greek Primary School, is about the ridiculousness of the accusations that arise in moments of political tension.


Burçak Bingöl

For the Biennial, Burçak Bingöl has created a series of works responding to today’s Istanbul, the global culture of surveillance, as well as to the tradition of ceramics and crafts. Works in the series “Follower” are experiments in dissemblance and stealth, in which tradition becomes a means of camouflage or disguise. Having observed that in the Tarlabasi neighborhood of Istanbul there was an increasing number of surveillance cameras, Bingöl covered a number of them with a ceramic pattern of flowers and garlands and placed them on the exteriors of buildings. The implicit weaponry of the surveillance camera is neutralised by the imagery of flowers, becoming fragile and even beautiful, and the decoration incorporates plants from the Beyoglu area of Istanbul, which is symbolic as a site of resistance.

Please click here to see the 14 different spots of the series “Follower”.


Pedro Goméz-Egaña

Pedro Goméz-Egaña’s work, which can be viewed at the Galata Greek Primary School, approaches the double meaning of the “underground” space as a place of limitation and of freedom. In his performance piece and installation “Domain of Things” (2017), Goméz-Egaña conceives of the underground simultaneously as a place of shelter and a place of pleasure. When the performers activate a machine underneath the structure, the “home” above begins to move, crumble to pieces, disperse, and re-create itself anew.