Mardin is located in the southeastern Anatolia region of Turkey, in the Turkish part of Mesopotamia near the borders with Syria and Iraq. Its historic old town is being considered for inscription as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The 7th Mardin Biennial is curated by Çelenk Bafra, artistic director of Istanbul Modern. Participating artists include Šejla Kamerić and the group Slavs and Tatars.
"Mardin’s architectural and cultural landscape bears the traces of millennia shaped by Arab, Assyrian, Kurdish, Turkish, and other communities. Long a crossroads of trade, belief, and culture, the city’s intertwined languages, religions, and social structures continue to inform its cultural and political identity. Its elevated position has offered both a strategic vantage point and a symbolic threshold between empires and civilizations, underscoring Mardin’s enduring geopolitical significance. Often described as an open-air museum, the city embodies the architectural and spiritual legacy of ancient Mesopotamia, marked by histories of coexistence and conflict alike.
Within this context, 'SKYground' renders visible the relationships contemporary art forges between reality and imagination, the material and the spiritual, the political and the poetic. Establishing a line between sky and ground, the individual and the collective, the past and the future, the 7th Mardin Biennial invites audiences to traverse territories commonly perceived as irreconcilable. By bringing together the 'sky' and the 'ground' that divide the horizon, the biennial opens a contemplative passage between worlds assumed to be far apart."
