How to (Un-)Do a Biennale from a Beach under Siege: The Gaza Biennale Istanbul Pavilion – An interview with Almut Sh. Bruckstein/House of Taswir
By Zeynep Turan
Published at THIRD TEXT, May 1, 2026
In 2024, a group of Palestinian artists, in collaboration with the Forbidden Museum (Al Risan Art Museum) near Ramallah, initiated the Gaza Biennale in response to ongoing conditions of erasure, displacement, cultural silencing and genocide in Palestine. Conceived as a transnational initiative and remaining an ongoing project today, the Biennale has taken shape through solidarity-based pavilions hosted by international galleries and art institutions in sixteen cities to date. The Istanbul pavilion was presented at Depo Istanbul from 19 September to 8 November 2025. Hosted by House of Taswir, the exhibition featured works by more than fifty artists from Palestine, Gaza, and beyond. This interview and conversation with cultural theorist, writer, and curator of the Istanbul Pavilion, Almut Sh. Bruckstein, was initiated in September 2025, and continued at different times and in different contexts until January 2026. It focuses on the Istanbul pavilion of the Gaza Biennale and the broader questions it raises around exhibition-making, solidarity and cultural practice.
‘A Cloud in My Hand’, the Istanbul Pavilion of the Gaza Biennale initiative, 2025, installation view of the ‘Museum of Affinities and of Distant Collaborations’, with works by Alaà Al Shawa, Motaz Naim and Ana Sontag, photo by Yasin Tubail, courtesy of the artists and House of Taswir
Zeynep Turan: Since 7 October 2023, Palestine has become a global concern. Many artists and cultural workers have been threatened or fired for their support of Palestine. Responses – particularly in Europe and the United States – have included boycotts, strikes, open letters and museum occupations. How do you evaluate the solidarity actions of art institutions and artists against the genocide?
Almut Sh. Bruckstein: First of all, dear Zeynep, thank you for this invitation. We know that many European and Western cultural institutions are siding with fascism and are complicit in the genocide against the Palestinian people, against all the evidence of what happens live-streamed before our eyes. But there are many artists, scholars and colleagues who are standing up for justice and humaneness in the midst of this very oppressive environment. I admire the courage and the resilience of the activists who are taking to the streets expressing our protest loudly. Street activism is a very important thing today. The fact that 200,000 people march across London Bridge shows the world that there is a civil uprising against this kind of genocidal violence.
At House of Taswir, we are humbled to stand with the Gazan artists and the power of their artistic imagination, through which they continue to create art amidst a death machine that aims to indiscriminately kill and destroy. It seems that the defiant gesture of the artist creates a kind of post-liberation scene, as if to anticipate the beauty of Palestine, a free Palestine in the midst of a death field, through broken pens and brushes, resisting erasure.
ZT: From your perspective, how did the idea of the Gaza Biennale emerge? What have Palestinian artists and the institutions involved in the biennale experienced?
AShB: The Gaza Biennale, unlike other biennials, was initiated and commissioned by the artists themselves. In 2024, around fifty artists proclaimed this biennale on a beach under siege.
For the full interview – go to THIRD TEXT: the Bruckstein/Turan Interview.
With many thanks to Zeynep Turan and The Istanbul Pavilion team.