The exhibition features about 50 Gazan artists from the recently founded Gaza Biennale initiative (www.gazabiennale.org).
As some or even many of the artists and art works may be prevented from physical travel, the exhibition will explore matters of telepathic re-production, tele-authorship, holo-grammatical presences, and modes of in-situ co-creating. Mobile phone props, social media windows, live-interviews, mural writing, wall plots, and even an emerging museum of authorized painting-doubles may be some of the formats by which this Biennial will challenge traditional gallery norms and even the very concept of the Biennial as such. A Table of Scholars in desired collaboration with the curator of the 18th International Istanbul Biennial Christine Tohme will be active throughout the entire time of the exhibit.
“No war can stop the dreams of dreamers, and no mechanism of domination extinguish the light in the hearts and minds of creators.” (Gaza Biennial, 2024)
GAZA BIENNIAL ISTANBUL PAVILLON will serve as an art space, a meeting point to share art, poetry, film screenings, dreams, thoughts, anxieties, and more. Communal activities, film screenings and poetry programs will be hosted by the Palestinian filmmaker Khaled Tanji (Damascus/Istanbul) in desired collaboration with the French-Palestinian artist Jassem Hindi (Oslo). Drawing inspiration from Hindi’s performance “Laundry of Legends” (2018-2025) the exhibit sets out to create a place of gathering and sharing absent voices, and unseen pains and loves, celebrating “slow revolutions” through poetry and art, hospitality and generosity.
“Palestinian agency is about researching and creating the conditions for communal sharing and the transmission of narratives in ruins. It is a gift performance, … sharing poetry and art is a physical, discursive and emotional gesture,. Often it incidentally is an attempt to fulfill a death bed promise. This can only be done physically, from person to person.”
Jassem Hindi
Concept: A.S. Bruckstein / House of Taswir.
Istanbul/Berlin, March 5, 2025