Ali Kazma will represent Turkey with Resistance
at the 55th International Art Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia
1 June–24 November 2013
Inauguration: 30 May 2013
Professional preview: 29–31 May 2013
Artiglierie, Arsenale, Venice
Curator: Emre Baykal
Commissioner: Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts
Project Coordinator: Deniz Ova
Ali Kazma will represent Turkey with a video series under the title Resistance at the 55th International Art Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia from 1 June to 24 November 2013. Curated by Emre Baykal, the Pavilion of Turkey will be located at Artiglierie, Arsenale.
Resistance is a survey on the discourses, techniques and management tactics developed for the body today and focuses on the interventions and strategies that both release the body from its own restrictions and restrict it in order to control it. Ali Kazma attempts to read the complex meanings and the enigma produced by the body as a physical and conceptual space from within a broad network of relations. In this multi-channel video installation to be premiered in Venice, Kazma researches the networks that shape the body within social, cultural, economic, political, scientific and mental layers. In the framework of Resistance, the multiple ways and strategies that manipulate and rearrange the human body and the tension that emerges within the infinite possibilities and borders of the body as a field of information, control and performance are explored under a range of diverse definitions and perceptions such as “material body,” “social body,” “body under surveillance,” “disciplined body,” “body at work,” “speaking body,” “the lived body” and “the sexual body.”
Born in 1971 in 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 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, with his “Obstructions” series that he had been working on since 2005. The artist, whose videos question and explore the different rhythms and states of human existence and its relationship to contemporary conditions, 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. Kazma has been living in Istanbul since 2000.
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: Tunel – Karakoy together with Fulya Erdemci. In 2007, he directed santralistanbul’s inauguration show, titled Modern and Beyond, an art-historical account of contemporary art in Turkey. Amongst the exhibitions Baykal curated are Envy, Enmity, Embarrasment (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.
A book will accompany Ali Kazma’s video installation Resistance. Designed by Esen Karol and published by Yapı Kredi Publications, the book will be available at the launch of the Pavilion with two separate editions in Turkish and English, and will subsequently be sold in major bookstores in Turkey and Europe.
The Pavilion of Turkey is organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), sponsored by FIAT and realised under the auspices of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Republic of Turkey with the contribution of The Promotion Fund of the Turkish Prime Ministry. SAHA Association provided production support for the Pavilion of Turkey.
For further information: www.iksv.org
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
