by Anna Zizlsperger
This year, we are witnessing the strongest presence of Turkey at the Venice Biennale since its first appearance at the esteemed art and factual content to structure this fascinating story. We have put together this mass of information, like pieces of a puzzle, for your reference and enjoyment. hat we ended up with is far from a comprehensive overview, but we are proud of our dedicated efforts, which manifest here in the form of a timeline. e present this history with an awareness of unavoidable gaps, but for the first World’s Futures curated by Okwui Enwezor, for the first time hosts two artists from Turkey in the main exhibition space — namely, Kutluğ Ataman and Meriç Algün Ringborg — while the Armenian Pavilion includes works by sarkis and Hera Büyüktasçıyan, together with Sarkis’s installation ‘Respiro’ at the Pavilion of Turkey. This unprecedented representation of artists from Turkey is the perfect occasion to have a closer look at the history of the participation of artists from Turkey at one of the biggest platforms for artists worldwide. Very little information can be found on Turkey’s earlier participation in the Venice Biennale. However, with the kind support of the Venice Biennale archive and the Beral Madra archive, we were able to collect large amounts of data. The Istanbul Foundation for culture and the arts (İKSV), which has been organising the Pavilion of Turkey in Venice since 2007, also provided us with images and information integral to our project. Here, through numerous interviews with former curators of the Pavilion of Turkey and established artists who have been involved in exhibitions at the Venice Biennale, we offer personal insights and factual content to structure this fascinating story. We have put together this mass of information, like pieces of a puzzle, for your reference and enjoyment. That we ended up with is far from a comprehensive overview, but we are proud of our dedicated efforts, which manifest here in the form of a timeline. We present this history with an awareness of unavoidable gaps, but for the first time ever, we have sketched a detailed underpainting of Turkey’s inclusion in this, the mother of biennials. (…)