6th MARDIN BIENNIAL 

INVITED: “MÜŞTEREK/ UNIFIED” 

TEXT: EBRU NALAN SÜLÜN 

The 6th Mardin Biennial, themed “Further Afield...,” offers an in-depth examination of social and cultural issues. In light of globalization, technological transformations, and social changes, it seeks artistic solutions for a more just and free world. It addresses the fight against racism and “coexistence” from post-colonial, feminist, and decolonial perspectives. The Biennial views art as an agent of social change and transformation, aiming to discover human potential through this medium. 

Excerpt from the curator's text: 

"...Where can we turn our gaze to find possibilities of escaping the structure that envelops us, the intensifications that constrain our freedoms, and to look at the globalized past of societies?...We are going through a period of re-identification within open cages that we thought we had overcome, but which have caught us unawares. How can we turn the struggle against racism in a post-colonial and feminist, intersectional, decolonial deconstruction context into a state of “coexistence” with nature, culture (the Anthropocene and Capitalocene), plants, animals, other humans, ethnicities, nations, classes, and regions? How can we overcome these problems without denying any of them and by continuously fighting against them, without getting tired and without giving up the struggle, and how can we foresee imagining “further distances”?...." ALİ AKAY 

The 5th Mardin Biennial hosted a group of artists in the “INVITED” exhibition with a free conceptual approach. In my 2022 review of “Invited,” which had its first exhibition at the 5th Mardin Biennial, I wrote: 

“...One of the notable innovations of this biennial is the ‘Invited’ exhibition held within the biennial. The ‘Invited’ exhibition, which can be visited during the biennial, explores an autonomous path and form of exhibition-making beyond the familiar status and duties of contemporary art, opening up a friendly, collaborative, and sustainable exhibition model alongside the main exhibition of the biennial.”1 

1 https://www.unlimitedrag.com/post/bir-milat-misali-bienal-den-sonra-mardin (Accessed on: 18.04.2024). 

Curated by Ali Akay, the 6th Mardin Biennial will continue to bring together a collaborative, sustainable “Common” exhibition model with its audience, maintaining a dialogue with this year's “Invited” biennial theme, which is being held for the second time. 

“Invited: Unified” draws inspiration from the intersection of Mardin's historical and cultural heritage with the aesthetic, scientific, and metaphorical possibilities of sunlight, while also proposing a new dialogue through the intersection of space and time, history and urban ecology. This proposal prioritizes reflection, interaction within a relational aesthetic context, and the relationship between the viewer and the participant, while also placing reflection at its core. 

This year, under the title “Invited: Unified,” ‘INVITED’ poses the following question to viewers through biennial curator Ali Akay: "... How can we overcome these problems without denying any of them and by continuously struggling with them, without tiring and without giving up the struggle, and 

and envision more ‘distant’ horizons? ... How can we, especially, emerge from the current global situation and establish a ‘negotiating democracy’ among living beings (in the idea of a ‘Parliament of Things’ that is as human as it is other living beings)?..." The exhibition will seek answers to these questions and focus on the main axis that shapes its name: the state of being “common,” that is, perspectives on “what is done/used collectively, in cooperation.” 

In this process of focus, the works essentially provide a single answer to all the questions posed by curator Ali Akay: managing, succeeding, attempting, experiencing, enabling experience, learning from the past, looking at the day/sky/city, thinking about the past and present together, anticipating the future, and perhaps doubting, thinking, worrying... 

In this search and proposal, the exhibition prioritizes delving into the depth of the etymological and epistemological structure that positions/shapes/separates the common elements of the historical process dating back to the city's earliest days, the region's nature, geography, beliefs, religion, and language, and reminding us of all these and experiencing/sharing them. 

In the exhibition, the exhibition spaces of Ahmet Rüstem Ekici-Hakan Sorar/Cansu Sönmez/Mehmet Çimen, their perspectives on the approaches taken, their contexts, and their traditional/newest production channels that merge with each other also aim to refer to this context of “Being Common”. All the works to be seen, experienced, heard, and felt come together precisely for this reason in the selected materials and production methods. With an “anachronistic” approach, the materials selected, along with the production processes and methods, propose this exhibition's commonality. 

The selection of the “EXIT” art collective's main venue for this purpose/discussion space also complements the exhibition theme in this context. Founded by Seçkin ACAR and Mehmet ÇİMEN, the “Invited: Müşterek/Unified” exhibition is their first exhibition.