Fatih Belediyesi - Klasik Türk Sanatları Vakfı, 3. Yeditepe Bineali

The 3rd Yeditepe Biennial has brought a new and different perspective to contemporary art discussions in Turkey. In addition to presenting the cultural policy of biennials held under the auspices of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey, it provides an opportunity to reconsider the arguments of the ongoing contemporary-traditional polarity in art discussions. In this context, traditional Turkish-Islamic arts have been encouraged to realize their own practices in new dimensions and spaces. Thus, issues such as style, technological innovations, and differences in exhibition formats such as installations have been re-examined in practice, and the question of whether Turkish-Islamic arts have a philosophy has been debated in academic circles. In this study, in order to examine the philosophical layers of the 3rd Yeditepe Biennial, the three venues where the biennial was held—Yedikule Fortress, Sirkeci Station Warehouses, and Nuruosmaniye Mosque Cistern—were evaluated within the conceptual framework of “memory spaces.” The historical, ontological, and metaphorical dimensions of these spaces were analyzed to reveal the mutual interaction between the space and the artwork. The curators' approaches were examined within the conceptual framework of “metaphysics of authenticity”; the exhibition formats specific to each space were related to the curators' perspectives and meaning-building processes. In this context, the positioning of the three different perspectives offered by the three different spaces, the relationships established between the exhibited works and the space, and the conceptual analysis through cultural conservatism, atomic approach, and pantheistic approach have been analyzed. Finally, the main discussion topics that emerged in the academic talks held within the scope of the biennial are highlighted, and the importance of the open space that these discussions revealed is emphasized.