Khalil Rabah “Red Navigapparate” | Garden of the Former French Orphanage. Image © Sahir Ugur Eren
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https://www.archdaily.com/1034498/first-chapter-of-the-18th-istanbul-biennial-opens-exploring-self-preservation-and-futurity
The 18th Istanbul Biennial, organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), has opened its first phase to visitors and will remain on view until November 23, 2025. Curated by Christine Tohmé under the title “The Three-Legged Cat,” the biennial is envisioned as a three-year process unfolding between 2025 and 2027. The second phase, scheduled for 2026, will focus on establishing an academy and collaborating with local initiatives through a series of public programs. The third and final chapter in 2027 will bring together the accumulated encounters through exhibitions and workshops.
Khalil Rabah “Red Navigapparate” | Garden of the Former French Orphanage. Image © Sahir Ugur Eren
Christine Tohmé, based in Beirut, Lebanon, is known for her work at the intersection of cultural production, arts education, and community-building. For this edition of Istanbul Biennial, her curatorial framework reflects on self-preservation and futurity while acknowledging the global climate of violence. In her words, “Artmaking is engaged as a counterpoint to erasure, in summoning what has been buried, in generating surplus from loss, and in projecting possible worlds, it becomes a form of testimony and an index of persistence.”
Lungiswa Gqunta “Assemble the Disappearing” | Galata Greek School. Image © Sahir Ugur Eren
The Three-Legged Cat proposes that preservation is world-building. To rest, to linger, to scavenge, to laugh, to refuse – these are not minor gestures but foundational blocks towards a yet-to-come. – Christine Tohmé on the introduction of the 18th Istanbul Biennial Guide
Related Article The 18th Istanbul Biennial Unveils Venues and Artists for Its First Leg 
Zihni Han. Image © Sahir Ugur Eren
The biennial extends across eight venues in Beyoğlu and Karaköy, forming a walkable route that interweaves art with the city‘s architectural fabric. In a context where spaces for cultural production face pressures of gentrification and commodification, many of the venues, abandoned, under renovation, or in transition, reflect the precarious state of Istanbul‘s built environment. Minimal interventions, limited to essential refurbishment, allow the works to respond directly to the existing architecture and surrounding urban conditions.
Celina Eceiza | Zihni Han. Image © Sahir Ugur Eren
The 2025 edition features works by 47 artists presented across eight sites: Galata Greek School, Zihni Han, Muradiye Han, Galeri 77, Cone Factory, Meclis-i Mebusan 35, the Garden of the Former French Orphanage, and Elhamra Han. Each venue carries its own historical and architectural significance. Muradiye Han, for instance, was designed by M. Vedad Tek, an architect of the First National Architecture Movement, originally serving as a trading house before becoming a French military post during the occupation of Istanbul. Restored in 2021 by Han Tümertekin, it now hosts Ana Alenso’s installation as part of the biennial. Galeri 77, a former wine storage facility from 1895, features works by Haig Aivazian, Ola Hassanain, Mona Marzouk, and Dilek Winchester. Elhamra Han, one of Istanbul‘s earliest theater halls, built in 1827, was later adapted for entertainment and commercial uses and now includes works by Mona Benyamin, Şafak Şule Kemancı, Jagdeep Raina, Riar Rizaldi, Lara Saab, Natasha Tontey, and Sevil Tunaboylu for the biennial.
Khalil Rabah “Red Navigapparate” | Garden of the Former French Orphanage. Image © Sahir Ugur Eren
Among the highlights, Khalil Rabah’s “Red Navigapparate,” presented in the Garden of the Former French Orphanage, operates at the intersection of spatial intervention and conceptual inquiry. The installation engages with questions of land, displacement, and contested histories. A narrow water channel cuts through the site, traversed by a rigid red pipe evoking infrastructures of extraction and control. On one side, a manual transpalette placed on a marble pedestal contrasts mobility with constraint. Opposite, a field of more than 1,000 red barrels, each planted with olive, citrus, or nut trees, forms a temporary nursery, where rootedness and displacement are staged in tension.
Ana Alenso “What Mine Gives, the Mine Takes” | Muradiye Han. Image © Sahir Ugur Eren
Ana Alenso presents an immersive multimedia installation at Muradiye Han, reflecting on the social and ecological realities of gold mining in Venezuela‘s Amazon region. At Galeri 77, Ola Hassanain‘s “A Whispering Dam (2024)” explores the relationship between built infrastructures, ecological systems, and power regimes. The sculptural work references the modernist Sennar Dam on the Blue Nile, Sudan, evoking the intersections of environmental fragility, social life, and political structures. At the Galata Greek School, Lungiswa Gqunta introduces “Assemble the Disappearing (2024–2025),” a maze-like, post-organic terrain whose ruptures and twists evoke discontinuity and collapse. Drawing on the writings of anti-colonial thinker Amílcar Cabral, who emphasized a return to land as central to liberation, Gqunta’s installation extends her practice of resisting colonialism, dispossession, and erasure, while addressing legacies of patriarchy, imperial violence, and apartheid in South Africa.
Ola Hassanain “A Whispering Dam” | Galeri 77. Image © Sahir Ugur Eren
Claudia Pagès Rabal “Five Defense Towers” | Cone Factory. Image © Sahir Ugur Eren
With its first chapter now open, the 18th Istanbul Biennial situates contemporary artistic practices within both the shifting urban fabric of Istanbul and broader global conditions. By engaging with themes of displacement, memory, ecology, and resistance, the biennial positions art as a means of reflecting on the present while projecting possible futures. Extending across historically layered venues in Beyoğlu and Karaköy, the exhibition underscores the interdependence of cultural production and the built environment.
Works of Eva Fàbregas and Pilar Quinteros | Meclis-i Mebusan 35. Image © Sahir Ugur Eren
In other international events, the inaugural Copenhagen Architecture Biennial opened on September 18 and will remain on view until October 19 under the theme “Slow Down.” The first edition of the Bukhara Biennial, open until November 20, presents more than 70 site-specific commissions across the historic core of the Uzbek city, framed within a long-term heritage plan. Meanwhile, the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale continues until November 23, showcasing 65 National Pavilions alongside contributions from more than 750 participants working across disciplines and generations.