The Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), which with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism coordinates the Turkish pavilion at the Venice Biennale, has chosen visual artist and filmmaker Gülsün Karamustafa to represent the country at the event’s sixtieth iteration, to take place April 20 to November 24, 2024. Considered one of Turkey’s most outspoken and influential artists, the Ankara-born Karamustafa will present an installation curated by Esra Sarıgedik Öktem.
Karamustafa’s career spans more than five decades, during which time she has gained a reputation for materially and methodologically diverse works commenting on issues including gender, displacement, migration, and memory, as well as the modernization of Turkey and its traumatizing effect on the country’s populace. Her practice embraces painting, installation, readymades, assemblage, photography, and video, all of which she places in the service of investigating sociopolitical injustices. Karamustafa frequently centers historical narratives as well as her own personal experiences in her work, which she has said is additionally guided by materials. She has enjoyed career retrospectives at Germany’s Hamburger Bahnhof—Museum für Gegenwart, SALT in Istanbul, and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Karamustafa has participated in multiple iterations of the Istanbul Biennale as well as the Gwangju Biennale, the São Paulo Bienal, and the Singapore Biennale, among other such international events.
“We have a long-standing working relationship with Gülsün Karamustafa,” said Bige Örer, director of Istanbul Biennial and İKSV Contemporary Art Projects, in a statement. “[She] is one of the leading figures of the contemporary art scene in Turkey and her work has traveled and found its significance in many different parts of the world. Her layered artistic practice engages with the most pressing issues of our time such as displacement and migration, exile and ethnicity, sexuality and gender and many other socio-political issues which will have a dialogue with the conceptual framework of the main exhibition titled ‘Foreigners Everywhere,’ curated by Adriano Pedrosa.”
The Turkish pavilion is sponsored by the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is located in the Arsenale.