The big day has finally come: The 11th International İstanbul Biennial opens its doors to arts buffs today.

While there is already a huge artistic traffic flowing through İstanbul apart from the biennial, the event itself will host 141 projects by 70 artists from 40 countries.

Organized by the İstanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) under the sponsorship of Koç Holding and the curatorship of WHW (What, How and for Whom), the event is also supported by the İstanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality.

Turning the city into a platform of contemporary art through Nov. 8, the İstanbul Biennial is showcasing its exhibitions at three venues: the old customs warehouse, Antrepo No. 3 in Karaköy; the old tobacco warehouse in Tophane; and the Feriköy Greek School in Şişli, which is serving as an art space for the first time and has been empty since it closed in 2003 due to lack of students.

The biennial also attracts a high level of international interest. Opening its doors to members of the press with a news conference on Thursday, the biennial is expected to draw 400 members of the press from 35 countries. Besides the press, it is anticipated that the number of professionals visiting the biennial will reach 3,000 with art critics, curators and directors of numerous museums and galleries from all over the world. The directors of such prestigious institutions as the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern and Centre Georges Pompidou will also be here during the first week of the biennial.

Highlight on political issues

The exhibitions in the biennial have a somewhat political stance. “Pomegranate,” “Smuggling Lemons” and “Sainthood and Sanity-hood” by Jumana Emil Abboud; “The Sea is a Stereo” by Mounira Al Solh; “Decolonizing.ps” by Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti and Eyal Weizman; “Qalandia” by Wafa Hourani; “The Signs of Conflict: Political Posters of Lebanon's Civil War” by Zeina Maasri; and “I, the undersigned” and “With Soul, With Blood” by Rabih Mroué are only some examples which have strong reflections of Middle East politics.

“Territory 1995” by Marko Peljhan; “Democracies” by Artur Zmijewski; “Administration of Terror” by Bureau d'études; “Ideal Media” by Lado Darakhvelidze; and “Pipedreams: A Chronicle of Lives Along the Pipeline” by Rena Effendi are some of the artworks which refer to the political situation in the former Yugoslavia and in Caucasia and refer to the use of power by specific groups influencing world politics.

Every artist has his or her own style: photographs, installations, performances or posters, but most of them highlight the outcomes of the use of violence on ordinary people's lives, the forgotten stories of immigrants, the never-realized promises and a questioning of “autonomy.” In this respect, the biennial has an anti-violent stance while trying to break down the clichés that have been fed to the masses up to now by those who govern.

‘What Keeps Mankind Alive?’

The question is surely one of the most striking aspects of the biennial. The title of this year's biennial, “What Keeps Mankind Alive?” is a quote from the closing song of “The Threepenny Opera” written by Bertolt Brecht in 1928 in collaboration with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill. The title itself invites the visitor to develop a (self) questioning approach while exploring the works of art in the exhibitions. The curators of the exhibition of WHW also explained the background of the title during the press conference: “The Biennial's title, ‘What Keeps Mankind Alive?' evokes two main subjects: politics and economics. ... ‘What Keeps Mankind Alive?' seeks to rethink the biennial as a meta-device with the potential to facilitate the renewal of critical thinking by extracting thought from the immediate artistic and political context where it takes place. In other words, ‘What Keeps Mankind Alive?' does not seek to take local specifics as some sort of prism to read the global. It rather addresses both local and international audiences head-on with questions about the contemporary world.”