CONTEMPORARY ISTANBUL APPOINTS ANISSA TOUATI ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Contemporary Istanbul (CI) has announced that independent curator Anissa Touati will join the fair as artistic director and will lead the conceptual vision for the fourteenth edition, which will take place at the Istanbul Congress Center and Convention and Exhibition Center from September 12 to September 15, 2019.
“For the fourteenth edition of Contemporary Istanbul, we will reflect on the question of Mediterraneanism, exploring the unification of the basin from the past to the present day,” Touati said in a statement. “I look forward to working to further build strategic partnerships, forging relationships with organizations both locally and internationally, enhancing what has been achieved to date.”
Touati currently serves as associate director of the Chalet Society, the mobile Paris-based arts institution established by Marc-Olivier Wahler in 2012, and divides her time between France and Mexico, where she has curated exhibitions such as “Coordenadas” (2018), a solo show of work by Jesper Just at the Anahuacalli Museum in Mexico City, and “Made By 4 Hands” (2018), a group show featuring the work of Morgane Tschiember, Douglas Gordon, John Armleder, and Olivier Mosset at OMR Gallery in Mexico City. Her other recent curatorial projects include “Cycles of Collapsing Progress” (2018), which was cocurated by Karina El Helou, at the Rashid Karami International Fair and “¿Cómo te voy a olvidar?” (2016) at Galerie Perrotin in Paris.
Among the highlights of the upcoming edition of CI, which will coincide with the sixteenth Istanbul Biennial curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, are “Recent Acquisitions I / Collectors’ Stories,” an exhibition that will showcase recently acquired artworks selected from forty private Turkish collections. CI also revealed that Esra Özkan—the director and curator of “bang. Art Innovation Prize,” an award program run by the Istanbul-based arts and technology firm ArtBizTech—will curate Plugin, a section of the fair that will focus on new media and digital arts.
