ON a searingly hot Saturday in early June, a small crowd of residents and tourists stood inside the entryway of the 14th-century Zinciriye Medresesi, a mosque and former medrese, or center of Islamic study, in Mardin, an ancient town in southeastern Turkey. Hanging in a row on a wall beneath the narrow room’s vaulted ceiling were front pages from recent issues of Turkish, French and British newspapers. Each was missing a headline, and visitors took turns inscribing their own on strips of paper stacked beneath the display.

“Obama, We Don’t Need You,” scrawled a teenage boy, commenting on recent friction between the Turkish and United States governments over Israel’s handling of the Gaza aid flotilla. “Antalya Doctors Arrive in Mardin!” wrote a smartly dressed medical conference attendee.

“Mansetin,” or “Your Headline,” by the Turkish artist and graphic designer Hakan Irmak, was one of a number of works displayed at Zinciriye as part of the first Mardin Bienali this summer. Video, installations, paintings and photographs by 63 Turkish and international artists were exhibited in two medreseler, an abandoned mansion from the early 20th century, and the city’s central square. The bienali’s title, “Abbara Kadabara,” was an allusion both to the arched stone passageways, or abbaralar, that link Mardin’s streets, and the almost magical surprise of cutting-edge art in a city steeped in history.

When asked if he could have foreseen a contemporary art exhibition on the scale of the bienali when he arrived in Mardin from Istanbul a decade ago, Mr. Irmak laughed. “I’ll tell you about the progress here,” he said. “When I arrived no one knew what graphic design was. When I told people I was a graphic designer, they thought I was a traffic planner.” (As in English, the Turkish words for graphic and traffic rhyme.)

 

The bienali was the latest in a series of efforts aimed at establishing Mardin as southeastern Turkey’s capital of art and culture — a designation that might seen intuitive, given its longevity (excavations in the area indicate human settlements as far back as 4500 B.C.) and location, central in ancient times. Home to religiously and ethnically diverse populations, Mardin became a center of education, music and skilled crafts, a past evident in the intricately worked limestone that has graced the city’s architecture for centuries. Now Mr. Irmak and other local artists, along with publicly and privately sponsored cultural initiatives like the bienali, are breathing new life into the city’s creative pedigree.

Just 31 miles north of the Syrian border, Mardin is a stunning open-air museum of a city, with medreseler, mosques, churches, palaces and mansions scattered on the face of a rocky hillside jutting from tawny plains. The city was once a key location on the eastern Silk Road, resulting in markets and workshops — some carved directly into the hill, most still in use — that zigzag down from the avenue that bisects the city.