Esra Sar?gedik Öktem, curator of the Turkish Pavilion at the forthcoming Sixtieth Venice Biennale, has resigned in protest of the actions of pavilion organizer Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (?KSV), which earlier this month announced Iwona Blazwick as curator of the Eighteenth Istanbul Biennial despite the fact that the Biennial advisory board unanimously recommended Turkish-born curator Defne Ayas to lead the event. Öktem in an Instagram post wrote that the ?KSV’s treatment of Ayas had “distressed [her] deeply” and “highlighted the need for a more transparent selection process and the lack of mutual communication.”
Citing her desire to set a precedent for future generations, Öktem wrote that she was resigning as curator of the Turkish pavilion, “a position I have worked towards diligently for years, with dignity and tenacity; a position the recognition of which I was eager to celebrate together with all my colleagues and friends who called to congratulate me.” Turkish filmmaker and visual artist Gülsün Karamustafa, with whom Öktem had worked for decades, is representing Turkey at the Biennale.
Öktem’s relinquishment of the prestigious role represents the latest fallout in regard to the ?KSV’s appointment of Blazwick to lead the Istanbul Biennial. Scrutiny centers not on Blazwick, a renowned curator writer, and art historian who is chair of the Royal Commission for AlUla’s Public Art Expert Panel in Saudi Arabia and the former longtime director of London’s Whitechapel Gallery, but on the ?KSV, which rejected the highly qualified Ayas despite the committee’s informed recommendation. Ayas, a cocurator of the 2021 Gwangju Biennial and curator of the 2015 Moscow Biennale in Russia and Lithuania’s 2012 Baltic Triennial in Lithuania, earned the support of the entire panel, whose members included Yuko Hasegawa, director of Kanazawa, Japan’s 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art; Spain-based independent curator and former museum director Agustín Pérez Rubio; Istanbul-based curator and art historian Selen Ansen; Paris-based Turkish-Armenian artist Sarkis, who represented Turkey at the 2015 Venice Biennale in an exhibition curated by Ayas; and Blazwick herself.
Blazwick resigned following her appointment as Biennial curator; all board members except Hasegawa resigned in protest on learning the news. It is believed that the ?KSV’s rejection of Ayas centers on her curation of Sarkis’s Turkish Pavilion there, which the Art Newspaper noted incorporated the exhibition’s attendant catalogue, which was censored by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an on the grounds that it contained a text by assassinated Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink’s wife, Rachel Dink, mentioning the “Armenian genocide.” The government does not recognize the genocide.
“It was an honor to be considered for the role, and I am thankful that the advisory board recommended my appointment,” wrote Ayas in a statement. “I would have taken great pride in curating the forthcoming edition. At this point, I have no regrets and wish the Biennale success. I hope for the future that the nomination and selection processes will be fully transparent and more in keeping with the biennial’s legacy as one of the pre-eminent cultural events in the art world.”