Following the failed military coup in July and amid an increasing crackdown on freedom of expression in Turkey, the fifth Canakkale Biennial has been cancelled, its organisers announced yesterday (5 September). Beral Madra, the art director and the co-curator of the biennial since 2012, has also resigned.
“We are deeply saddened by the developments within a political agenda that does not place art as a primary point of concern,” the biennial’s organisers say in a statement. “In these circumstances, where art is eclipsed by the developments that exclude it, and also due to the sensitising atmosphere caused by the realities that surround us today, we have lost our ability and enthusiasm to carry out the biennale in line with our most vital values.”
One year after Aylan Kurdi’s lifeless body was washed up on a beach in Turkey, the biennial (slated to open on 24 September) had been due to focus on the fate of migrants and refugees as “one of the most urgent questions for our region and our city”, its organisers say. More than 40 international artists, many of them immigrants or from immigrant families, were due to take part. Expressing “deep love and gratitude" for those artists, as well as other participants and supporters, the organisers dedicated the unrealised event “to all the people who have been expelled from their homelands”.
