Monday, May 12, 2025

Iwona Blazwick Named Curator of 18th Istanbul Biennial

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Curator, author, and artwork historian Iwona Blazwick, chair of the Royal Fee for AlUla’s Public Artwork Knowledgeable Panel in Saudi Arabia and the former longtime director of London’s Whitechapel Gallery, will curate the Eighteenth Istanbul Biennial. Slated to happen September 14–November 17, 2024, the Biennial is sponsored by Turkish conglomerate Koç Holding and arranged by the nonprofit Istanbul Basis for Tradition and Arts (İKSV), which moreover phases the town’s movie, theater, and music festivals. The occasion’s theme and collaborating artists have but to be introduced.

Blazwick raised eyebrows final summer season along with her choice to simply accept her function in Saudi Arabia, which, like Turkey, has a poor human rights file. Responding to critics on the time, she asserted, “I’d somewhat be concerned the place I may also help contribute to freedom of expression, to artwork being nurtured, as a result of I consider artwork adjustments society.”

Blazwick led the Whitechapel from 2001 to 2022, throughout which era she gained a fame for a dedication to cutting-edge artwork and for commissioning new works from extremely acclaimed artists. She oversaw the gallery’s 2009 growth and strengthened its already excellent programming with solo exhibitions of artists equivalent to Isa Genzken, Nan Goldin, Hannah Höch, and Sarah Lucas, and group reveals together with “Again to Black: Artwork, Cinema, and the Racial Imaginary” (2005) and “Digital Superhighway (2016–1966)” (2016), the latter giving rise to quite a few post-internet-themed exhibitions at different establishments. Among the many schemes she has inaugurated are the Tate Turbine Corridor and Whitechapel Gallery commissioning packages and the Max Mara Artwork Prize for Girls. This final displays her career-spanning dedication to elevating the profile of artwork by ladies. A number of of the award’s recipients went on to win the Turner Prize, thought-about one of many UK’s prime honors. Earlier than touchdown at Whitechapel, she was director of exhibitions and shows at Tate Fashionable, having arrived there from the Institute of Modern Artwork London.  She earlier served as director of the pioneering feminist AIR Gallery.

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