Mending the breach: with the title "Poetic Justice," the latest Istanbul Biennial signaled its interest in reconciling self-expression and politics. For the first time, the exhibition sites included the Byzantine splendor of the Hagia Sophia

Art in America, Dec, 2003 by Eleanor Heartney

At first, glance, the title of the eighth Istanbul Biennial, "Poetic Justice," seemed to be one of those open-ended, important-sounding phrases that curators of international biennials like because they are malleable enough to fit almost any selection of works. A closer look at the show, presented this fall at various venues throughout that city, made it clear that the title was meant to set a challenge of sorts. In common parlance, the term "poetic justice" has an ironic cast, suggesting a cosmic or even divinely inspired reordering of relationships that ordinary human justice has failed to properly address. In the context of the exhibition, it seemed to refer to something different, namely, the desire to synthesize two apparently contrary approaches to modern art. Poetry, with its conotations of personal expression and subjectivity, was set off against Justice, a word which here stood for the political, the exterior and the objective. Curator Dan Cameron acknowledges the importance of the latter in a startlingly hard-hitting catalogue essay dealing in large part with the political and cultural failures of the current Bush administration.

The shadow of Documenta 11 hovered over the exhibition. Along with several artists, the two shows also shared two works. Uganda-born Zarina Bhimji's Out of the Blue, a haunting video tour of abandoned prisons in Rwanda and Kosovo, appeared in both shows. So did Iranian artist Seifollah 8amadian's The White Station (1999), all 8-minute video of a woman in a black chador battling through a Tehran snowstorm with an umbrella. In Istanbul, it was supplemented by another video of a spider spinning its lethal web and a set of evocative black-and-white photographs suggesting the disjunctive, surreal quality of life in contemporary Iran.

Despite such overlaps, one sensed that this show was also envisioned as an implied critique of Documenta 11. Chock-full of works dealing with justice and injustice in a postcolonial world, Documenta 11 was widely criticized for being too 'journalistic" and neglectful of esthetic qualities. In one of the catalogue essays for the Biennial, participating artist Kendell Geers takes on what he views as Documenta 11's closet colonialism, which reduced the expressions of artists from around the world to a common esthetic of "cold intellectualism."

"Poetic Justice," by contrast, promised to mend the breach that political art has opened between form and content, while maintaining the global perspective that was one of Documenta 11's acknowledged strengths. Cameron seemed particularly well suited to this task. As senior curator of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, and in his earlier incarnations as independent curator and critic, he has shown himself to be deeply interested in engaging art from all parts of the world.

As might be expected for an exhibition devoted to such lofty aims, the results were mixed. Along with a few soaring works that hinted at what such a synthesis might look like, there were many that offered more standard biennial fare, providing meditations on well-trod themes such as the contradictions of modernity, the conundrums of migration and displacement, and the mutability of identity. "Poetic Justice" also reflected other agendas--for instance, diversity of ethnic and national origin, cultivation and encouragement of younger artists, and solid representation of artists from the host country.

But whatever its limitations, members of the opening-day audience, many of them veterans of the leaden Venice Biennale earlier in the summer, were clearly delighted by a show with a recognizable theme, a reasonable number of intriguing new works and a manageable scale that left time to enjoy Istanbul itself.

As in previous versions, the show was spread over various venues throughout the city [see A.i.A., Apr. '00, Mar. '02]. The bulk of the work appeared in the Antrepo, a two-story former maritime warehouse refurbished as an art exhibition space. The upper floor was a light-flooded, white-box gallery filled with works in many mediums, while the dark and gloomy ground floor was devoted almost entirely to video and projected-slide installations. Many of these were tucked into strange, plastic-covered cylindrical viewing rooms whose curtained entrances were often difficult to locate. The two worlds were joined by a gleaming metallic staircase in the center of the building designed by Italian-born, Berlin-based artist Monica Bonvicini. Suspended from chains and topped with glass walls cracked with bullet holes, its brutalist architecture'e seemed to signal the seriousness of the show.

Other venues included the Tophane-I Amine Cultural Centre, a former cannon factory whose domed ceding provided a dramatic backdrop for the art below; the Yerebatan Cistern, a dark, lamp-lit, sixth-century Roman structure that served as a palace reservoir during the Byzantine era; and, for the first time, the Hagia Sophia, the souring sixth century basilica, which is one of Istanbul's architectural crown jewels. There were also a number of works scattered in public sites throughout the city, as well as a mini retrospective of the work of Shahzia Sikander at a gallery on the main pedestrian street.