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‘What is justice?’ This is the first of many big questions with which Dan Cameron, curator of the 8th International Istanbul Biennial, begins his impassioned, thought-provoking text for the exhibition catalogue. Although Cameron’s previous championing of art from peripheral locations and institutional clout (as senior curator at the New Museum in New York) make him an ideal choice for this important commission, the stakes are heightened by the presence of an American citizen in a predominantly Muslim context during this black hour of American foreign policy – a situation that further charges the theme of ‘poetic justice’.

To my understanding, ‘poetic justice’ is the rewarding of virtue or punishment of vice in an especially appropriate or ironic manner. True, there’s often more poetry than justice in its operation, but still the term implies a comeuppance of sorts, a providential settling of the score, the hand of a higher power at work. Cameron embraces, indeed advocates, the importance of the spiritual in its relationship to ethical and moral values in the practice of everyday life – that is, the reconciliation of internal reflection with external action. In fact, the conjoining of the two seems to be what he has in mind in his novel usage of ‘poetic justice’ as the headline proposition for an exhibition in which ‘global citizenship’ is declared a central premise, the basis for investigation of the relations between justice and art, and for the selection of many artists.





Cameron’s trenchant sociopolitical engagement, his scale of ambition for the project at this time of dire global conflict between competing value systems, leads us away from ‘poetic justice’ and onto the battlefield of moral philosophy as practiced in international politics. Appropriate – indeed imperative – though this goal may be, it is more than the exhibition’s 80 plus works by artists from 42 countries can support – perhaps more than any exhibition could support.

If one work could be considered exemplary in this demanding arena, however, it is Palestinian-born Emily Jacir’s Where we come from (2002–3), an installation of 32 photographs and one DVD with related texts at the Tophane-i Amire Culture and Arts Centre, a mid-fifteenth-century canon foundry and barracks building. Jacir asked dozens of Palestinians living in exile, ‘If I could do anything for you, anywhere in Palestine, what would it be?’. The work documents the desires of these exiles and the artist’s fulfilment of their wishes, afforded by her American passport. Geographic circumstances and identity documents are as varied as the wishes expressed, but the simplicity of accumulating wishful texts and fulfilling images amounts to much more than the sum of the parts. Where we come from is a heartrending work of extraordinary generosity and one of the most profoundly affecting works of art I have recently encountered.

Another notable work at the Tophane-i was Danica Dakic’s video installation Surround (2003). Dakic’s work focuses on the encounters among different languages, and Surround is a bird’s eye view of seven nude bodies reading (or singing) from different religious texts in different languages as the black, circular platform on which they crouch revolves. The turning, mandala-like form of their bodies is viewed from below as you lie in the darkness in a surround-sound environment of voices rehearsing different devotions in unison. Recognizing both common humanity and cultural difference, it is an exquisite metaphor for the way a more peaceful world might turn.

The massive Yerebatan Cistern was built by order of Emperor Justinian in 532AD and features 336 eight-metre stone columns supporting its vaulting. The cavernous venue provides a supernatural setting for video installations but is architecturally overwhelming. Nalini Malani and Jennifer Steinkamp’s contributions are particularly strong, but only with Fiona Tan’s montage of historical filmic imagery, in which people’s relationship to water is the leitmotif, could a case be made for artwork and architecture enhancing one another.

Siting is even more problematic in the Hagia Sophia’s deeply resonant interior, which was converted from the Church of Divine Wisdom to a mosque during the Ottoman period. Brazilian artist Marepe’s Brinquedo Cego-Blind Toy (2003) is a sort of wishing-well into which coins can be catapulted by a half-dozen little contraptions snaking away from the oval, metallic ‘pool’ set in a well-finished wooden box. One might read Blind Toy differently elsewhere. Here it seems to belittle the aspirations of the space in which it’s sited (there is, incidentally, some poetic justice in the Hagia Sophia’s belittling this Lilliputian doohickey right back). Worse is Dora Garcìa’s The Locked Room (2002), the artist’s private fantasy of a locked room inside her house, the entering of which would destroy the fantasy; here it is realized as a locked white box about ten feet square that is sadly at odds with the communitarian reverberations of the Hagia Sophia’s architecture and history.

Mike Nelson continues his ‘biennial hits’ world tour with an intervention, at the Valide Sultan Han near the Grand Bazaar, that is widely and rightly considered the best work of the exhibition. Purposefully difficult to find in the historically important caravansary – now dilapidated, half empty and neglected – Nelson’s contribution is as much about human communication and interaction as the mysterious darkroom installation on two floors. Walking tentatively down a dark corridor past the occasional light industrial worker or artisan, the bewildered art pilgrim was somehow found by Mehdi Çardak, the long-time occupant of No. 82, who held the keys to No. 50 and led visitor to it. Inside Nelson’s low-visibility installation, one had the sense of being in the guts of Istanbul’s history, transported there by the hundreds of black and white photographs of the area and Mr. Çardak’s enthusiasm for the building and its surroundings, which was delivered in a stream of Turkish.

The architecturally neutral Antrepo 4 Exhibition Hall, one of four government customs warehouses, offers biennial business as usual. Refined, signature contributions by Do-Ho Suh, Monica Bonvicini, Julie Mehretu, Tania Bruguera, Stephen Dean and Song Dong would be welcome in virtually any context. Shahram Karimi’s Traces (2003) is particularly pertinent to the exhibition theme: 248 portraits on a ‘canvas’ of sewn-together rice bags collectively represent a pantheon of those who’ve fought for the cause of modernity in Iran over the last hundred years, often at the cost of their lives. Nearby, Karimi’s haunting video gives us a slow-paced amble through an apparently ancient, now abandoned, desert dwelling structure. Other artists deploying a documentary or archival mode to powerful effect include Fernando Bryce, Xurban.net, Ersa Ersen and Kutlug Ataman, while many others seem irrelevant or regrettably trivial in relation to Cameron’s urgent theme.
There may not be an ideal solution for video works in these large-scale exhibitions (there’s usually ‘too much’ of it and it takes too long to get through it in aggregate, as the familiar kvetch goes), but Spanish architect Marcos Corrales Lantero’s innovation in the Antrepo’s ground floor is notable. Eschewing the usual black box, he devised spiralling, tent-like viewing chambers that welcome the viewer as though into a cocoon, cutting down on ambient noise and facilitating easier visitor flow.

The architectural renovation required to make of the raw Antrepo 4 an exhibition venue – and the difficulty one had getting to the space – begs the question of the Turkish government’s role in supporting this significant exhibition. Given not only the tourist revenue generated, but also the status of a global city of culture, it is hardly poetic justice that the government provided no up-front funding. The biennial foundation paid for the renovations that made the space viable (including the installation of toilets) and was also charged rent for the duration of the run! Thankfully, local sponsors provided 45% of the funding for this $2 million event (approximately a quarter of the Venice Biennial’s budget), but foreign governments and foundations had to come up with an additional 45% for participating artists. Does this explain the varied levels of presentation among participants – Jorge Macchi’s museum-standard wall lettering (complete with credits) across from Seifollah Samadian’s taped-up sheets of A4?

As Istanbul continues to compete in the international biennial arena, the government would do well to lend the foundation that supports this and four other cultural festivals in the city the helping hand it justly deserves. And if Cameron’s eighth edition of this event cannot be considered wholly successful, his aspirations certainly provide a noble benchmark for considering the possible transformational significance such exhibitions might have.

Joe Hill

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