When Ardan Özmenoğlu’s submission to the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011) was refused, she transformed this rejection into a performance, and opened an exhibition entitled “I Am Not a Biennial Artist” running concurrently with the biennial, opening up a discussion about being excluded from the biennial world. In recent years, a profile of art professionals and curators who constantly travel from one biennial to another around the world has emerged. The biennial season, when these professionals land in Istanbul every two years like a flock of migratory birds numbering between 5,000-10,000 flying from one biennial to another, is also an opportunity not to be missed for other artists and institutions in the city. In September of odd-numbered years, Istanbul's art life suddenly comes alive, with a sudden increase in the number of exhibitions by artists from Turkey. Artists all over Istanbul wait to be discovered. Ardan Özmenoğlu responded to this expectation with an exhibition claiming to reverse the expectation.
In her exhibition entitled “I Am Not a Biennial Artist”, Özmenoğlu presents popular culture images from Istanbul and Turkey to the appreciation of this crowd visiting the city with quasi-touristic curiosity. Among these colorful images, reproduced on Post-it notes using silk-screen printing, are a minibus, an evil eye bead, a döner kebab master, and even two wrestlers engaged in oil wrestling. Through the title of this exhibition opened during the biennial period, the artist questions his own state of exclusion, and through the fragmented and recurring popular culture images she uses, she questions the urban-touristic economies developing around biennials. She seeks the answer to power relations established through inclusion/exclusion in the prestigious institutions of the contemporary art world in a simple question: What is a biennial artist? Who gets to be called one?
This 104-page book featuring Özmenoğlu's works measures 16,5 × 24 cm, is printed on coated paper, and bound with cloth-covered hardcover. |
