Disorienting the Art World: Mona Hatoum in Istanbul

• Main Author: Jo Applin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Yale University 2016-07-01
• Series: British Art Studies
• Subjects: Mona Hatoum; Venice Biennale; British art; sculpture; international art; exhibition culture
• Online Access: http://britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-3/hatoum-istanbul-1995

In 1995 the German curator René Block was invited to curate the 4th International Istanbul Biennial. Titled “Orient/ation: The Vision of Art in a Paradoxical World”, Block eschewed the national groupings employed by most biennials, instead tackling head-on the idea of what nationality might mean in a climate of increasing global mobility in which the art world comprised an “international diaspora of artists”. Block’s poster for the Biennial was a hastily hand-drawn compass, its coordinates marked deliberately incorrectly. West was labelled North, South-East read as South-West, and the North-East was renamed “Istanbul”. According to this compass there is no one central point or locale relative to which its cardinal points of north, south, east, and west can make sense.