Ali Kazma represents Turkey with Resistance at the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia
1 June–24 November 2013
Professional preview: 29–31 May 2013
Pavilion of Turkey
55thInternational Art Exhibition
La Biennale di Venezia
Artiglierie, Arsenale
Venice
Curator: Emre Baykal
Commissioner: Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV)
Project Coordinator: Deniz Ova
The Pavilion of Turkey at the 55th International Art Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia presents Ali Kazma‘s new video series Resistance from 1 June to 24 November, 2013.Curated by Emre Baykal, the Pavilion of Turkey is located at Artiglierie, Arsenale, one of the main venues of the biennale.
Ali Kazma‘s multi-channel video installation Resistance explores the interventions and strategies that both release the body from its own restrictions and restrict it in order to control it. As an extensive survey on the contemporary discourses, techniques and management tactics developed for the human body, Resistance is an attempt to unravel the interventions imposed and practised on the body today. Comprising of thirteen works that run in loops on five screens in the exhibition space, the series explores the ways in which the body is shaped today through scientific, cultural and social tools, and how as a performance site it is repeatedly reproduced.
During the almost one-year long filming process of Resistance, Ali Kazma visited various sites to record the processes that both construct and control the body, as well as the struggle to break its genetic, physical, social and cultural codes.
In this comprehensive project, Ali Kazma worked in various parts of the world in different settings and with different subjects: a film set in Paris, a prison in Sakarya, a school and a hospital operating room in Istanbul, a cryonics institution in the US, a neurorobotics laboratory in Berlin, a medical research centre in Lausanne, and a tattoo studio in London, just to name a few.
Born in 1971, Istanbul, Ali Kazma completed his undergraduate studies in the United States. After briefly studying photography in London, he returned to the US to study film. He received his MA from The New School in New York City where he worked as a teaching assistant. Ali Kazma was granted the 2001 UNESCO Award for the Promotion of the Arts and received the 2010 Nam June Paik Award given by North Rhine-Westphalia Art Foundation in the field of media art, for the Obstructions series he had been working on since 2005. His videos question and explore the different rhythms and states of human existence and its relationship to contemporary conditions. Kazma has exhibited his works at the Istanbul Biennial (2001, 2007, 2011), Tokyo Opera City (2001), Platform Garanti Istanbul (2004), Istanbul Modern (2004), 9th Havana Biennial (2006), San Francisco Art Institute (2006), Lyon Biennial (2007), and Sao Paulo Biennial (2012) among others. Ali Kazma lives and works in Istanbul.
Emre Baykal worked for the Istanbul Biennial as Assistant Director from 1995 to 2000 and as Director from 2000 to 2005. In 2005, he co-curated the public space project Istanbul Pedestrian Exhibition II: Tünel–Karaköy together with Fulya Erdemci. In 2007, he directed santralistanbul’s inauguration show entitled Modern and Beyond, an art historical account of contemporary art in Turkey. Amongst the exhibitions Baykalcurated are Envy, Enmity, Embarrassment (Arter, 2013); Mona Hatoum You Are Still Here (Arter, 2012); Tactics of Invisibility (with Daniela Zyman; T-B A21, Vienna; Tanas, Berlin; Arter, Istanbul, 2010–2011), Second Exhibition (Arter, 2010–2011), Mahrem (santralistanbul; Kunsthalle Wien Project Space; Tanas, Berlin, 2007-2008); Kutluğ Ataman Mesopotamian Dramaturgies, (Arter, 2011), and Ali Kazma Obstructions (YKY Kazım Taşkent Art Gallery, 2010). Emre Baykal currently works as Exhibitions Director and Curator at Arter, Istanbul.
The book that accompanies Ali Kazma‘s video installation Resistance is published by İKSV and Yapı Kredi Publications, and designed by Esen Karol who has also designed the communication material of the project.The bilingual book will be launched during the opening of the pavilion and subsequently be sold in major bookstores.
Organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, the Pavilion of Turkey is sponsored by FIAT and realised with the contribution of The Promotion Fund of the Turkish Prime Ministry, under the auspices of Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism. SAHA Association provided production support for the Pavilion of Turkey.
For further information: www.iksv.org/en
For press images: www.iksvphoto.com
For press inquiries please contact:
Elif Obdan
Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts
T +90 (0) 212 334 07 13 / elif.obdan [at] iksv.org / media [at] iksv.org
Rhiannon Pickles
M +31 (0) 6158 21202 / rhiannon [at] picklespr.com
Juan Sanchez
M +44 (0) 78 8223 7732 / juan [at] picklespr.com
