Istanbul Biennale postponed as chief curator resigns

The Istanbul Biennale, one of the most important events in the European art world, was thrown into turmoil on Friday when its chief curator resigned and the event was postponed until 2025.

Divisions in the art world over the biennale's choice of Iwona Blazwick, a British curator, to oversee the event had made it “impossible” to open the exhibition in September as planned. The Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, which organizes the biennale, said in a press release.

A foundation spokeswoman said in a telephone interview that Blazwick resigned after the decision to postpone was reached.

There has been a fuss surrounding the exhibition for months. Before taking on the role of chief curator, Blazwick served on a four-person advisory panel that considered applications for the job and initially recommended that Defne Ayas, a Turkish curator, oversee the next edition, the 18th. But the biennale's organizers rejected that choice and announced in August that Blazwick himself would take the lead.

On Friday, a spokeswoman for the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts did not respond to an email asking why it had rejected Ayas, but art world insiders have theorized that it was because her selection in Turkey would have been politically inflammatory. In 2015, Ayas curated the Turkish pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The Pavilion's catalog included a brief reference to the Armenian Genocide – the murder of approximately 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire. Turkey denies that the genocide took place.

Blazwick, a high-profile figure in the contemporary art world who ran London's Whitechapel Gallery for 20 years, must have seemed a safer pair of hands, with experience in Europe and the Middle East to match Istanbul's position at that crossroads. She also chairs a royal commission in Saudi Arabia charged with development public art projects in the country.

But after Blazwick's appointment… The Art Newspaper reported the terms of her selection, including the sidelining of Ayas, and Turkish artists began to criticize the organizer's actions.

In October, dozens of artists who had participated in previous editions of the biennial were featured signed an online petition calling on the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts to review its curatorial selection process. “Who is the decision maker at the Istanbul Biennale?” the petition asked. “What are the criteria and ethical guidelines for the selection process?”

Within days, the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts announced that it would make the selection process more transparent for future editions and would only choose from candidates recommended by the advisory board. Despite that promise, four Turkish artists were invited to participate in the biennial announced in an Instagram post later that month that they declined the invitation because the event no longer represented “a favorable ground for the production and sharing of art.”

The Istanbul Biennale, which started in 1987 and takes place at locations across the city, has grown in prominence since the early 2000s. It is a valuable window for international curators and collectors to understand the concerns of Turkish artists, many of whom claim to self-censor to avoid upsetting the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his conservative supporters. This year's edition would focus on the “role of art in the aftermath of loss and trauma”, while previous editions have had themes around issues such as environmental change.

On Friday, a spokeswoman for the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts said in an email that a new curator would be appointed for the 2025 edition. Their appointment, she added, would be made in accordance with the new, more transparent selection process .