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Circuit breaking
Against a backdrop of political upheaval, the 18th Istanbul Biennale emerges with a renewed sense of clarity, offering a rare, grounded vision of what a biennale can be.
Text by Thomas Roueché
Sevil Tunaboylu, Remainder (2024). Courtesy of the artist.
IstanbulArea: 5,343 km2Time zone: GMT+3
Istanbul is famous for its thriving population of feral cats, with estimates suggesting their numbers range anywhere from 150,000 to over a million. The prevalence of cats dates back to the Ottoman period, when cats played a vital role in controlling pests in the predominantly wooden houses of the era.
Christine Tohmé’s Istanbul Biennale, The Three Legged Cat, opened in September 2025 against the backdrop of troubled days in the city. At the sunny opening ceremony, the city’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, who was jailed by the government earlier this year, was conspicuous by his absence.
Perhaps the Istanbul Biennale’s fate is always to be overshadowed by political events in the city. But what Tohmé’s edition differs from many of its predecessors was encapsulated by her description of the Biennale as a “humble gesture”. If the last decade has seen the rise and fall of biennale culture, The Three Legged Cat feels like an attempt to reestablish a more concrete approach to the form.
The exhibition, unusually, is the first in a tripartite programme which will take in public programming in 2026 and a second exhibition in 2027 (in effect, Tohmé is curating two Biennales). The selection was taken from an open call, an unusually democratic gesture. The result is a show that places great emphasis on each work individually, perhaps at the expense of a grand, overarching theme. But in a way, this seemed like something of a release from the heavy-handed curatorial approach that biennales have become synonymous with. Collected between just a small number of venues in the Beyoğlu area of the city, the Biennale felt modest, thoughtful and approachable.
Video works in particular stood out: Valentin Noujaïm’s documentary and installation, Pacific Club (2023), which explored the history and legacy of a nightclub patronised by diasporic Africans in the La Defense area of Paris, Haig Aivazian’s You May Own the Lanterns, but We Have the Light (2022), a cartoon adaption of an anticolonial struggle with many echoes of Palestine, Ana Vaz’s Meteoro: Paris, St Lazare (2023-ongoing), a heavy and intellectual meditation on cities on the verge of collapse, and Rafik Greiss’s The Longest Sleep (2024), a beautiful video piece that casts an intimate lens on Sufi Mawlid celebrations in Egypt.
But the most haunting works were Diaries from Gaza (2024), a collection of books and drawings by Sohail Salem, an artist working in Gaza through the genocide. Similarly, in Mona Benyamin’s Tomorrow, again (2023), the artist casts her own parents as characters in absurdist sketches, presenting them as news anchors who laugh hysterically and break down in tears.
In her curatorial remarks, Tohmé stated that these works were “bound together by an insistence on survival – they impart valuable lessons in nurturing the imagination and in sketching out horizons of possibility.” At the opening press conference, she dedicated her “words and her work to everyone that had passed, in remembrance of their victimhood – and their victoryhood – because we will always remember them. They are here with us every day. We will not forget the people who passed […] in Gaza, in Sudan, in Congo […] we have to stop the genocide in Palestine.”
It’s hard to imagine another international art event of this prestige where a curator would speak so openly. But Tohmé is showing us a delicate way forward for art in these troubling times that does not shirk from the realities surrounding us, but chooses to confront them, eyes wide open. .
Kongkee, Dragon’s Delusion: Departure (2017). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie du Monde.
Mona Benyamin, Tomorrow, again (2023). Courtesy of the artist.
Elif Saydam, Herkese çay (Tea for all) (2025). Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Leighton.
Akram Zaatari, Olive Green (2020). Courtesy of the artist, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, and Thomas Dane Gallery.
Rafik Greiss, The Longest Sleep (2024). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Balice Hertling.
Ian Davis, Auditors (2023) and Lustration (2025). Courtesy of the artist and Nicodim Gallery.
Haig Aivazian, You May Own the Lanterns, but We Have the Light (2022-2025). Courtesy of the artist.
Jagdeep Raina, The Boy In The Fields (2024). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Anne Barrault.