An Exhibition Review Istanbul. Passion, Joy, Fury

The Istanbul. Passion, Joy, Fury exhibition presents a wide range of production of 45 artists, architects, and researchers at MAXXI, the National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome, until May 8, 2016. Referring to current mutations of the urban, cultural and social reality in Istanbul, the exhibition features issues of urban transformation, political conflicts, resistance, innovative models of production, geopolitical urgencies, migration, and hope together with imaginations of poetic and utopian spaces. Starting with a presentation of the exhibition, the conversation of Ceren Erdem of the exhibition’s curatorial team and the catalogue writer Art Historian Ayşe Erek aims to bring a critical look at exhibitions on the city. An analysis of the exhibition is intended through the active engagement of the participants of the exhibition and the catalogue writers in the discussion.The exhibition catalogue, with its essays and interviews by sixteen researchers and curators, will also be launched.

Ceren Erdem is a curator based in New York and Istanbul. She holds an MA in Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies from Columbia University, New York.

Ayşe Erek, art historian and academic, has been a researcher at Berlin Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies. She is the co-founder of TACT Research Network on Art and the City, works and writes on space and city in contemporary art.