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5th Istanbul Design Biennial

Empathy Revisited: Designs for more than one

October 15 - November 15, 2020

Pera Museum hosted the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial, organized by Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV). For the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial, organised with the support of Republic of Turkey Ministry of Culture and Tourism and under the sponsorship of VitrA, curator Mariana Pestana teamed up with Sumitra Upham (Curator of Programmes) and Billie Muraben (Assistant Curator & Deputy Editor).

Today, we understand empathy to be a way of connecting with other people. But empathy’s original meaning encompassed the transference of feelings into objects and the natural world. The 5th Istanbul Design Biennial took empathy back to its roots to explore how design might equip us to feel into territories, landscapes, microorganisms, other species, and also one another.

With the aim of carving out a space of responsibility and developing a culture of attachment towards the more-than-human, this Biennial put forward a proposition: designs for more than one. Working collaboratively with designers, artists, architects, activists and thinkers, the biennial explored designs for multiple bodies, dimensions, and perspectives. The projects that the biennial presented encourage us to rethink practices of care and civility at this critical moment in time, and to collectively build new systems and structures for re-connecting.

Pera Museum hosted a part of the biennial’s generative programme comprising three main axes: two projects from the series of interventions titled New Civic Rituals, and a video series titled Critical Cooking Show. Kyriaki Goni’s Networks of Trust and the design studio The Rodina’s Map of Empathic Society could be experienced on the collection floors as part of the series of interventions titled New Civic Rituals. A parallel film program titled Empathy Sessions could be watched at the auditorium.

Top image
Hammam, Jawa El Khash

Right Hand Images
object*oriented*magic, Ayşenaz Toker and Merve Tuna
The Map of Empathic Society, The Rodina
Mush Rooms, BUREAU (Daniel Zamarbide) with Chef Walter El Nagar with Filipe Felizardo

Video

Empathy Sessions
5th Istanbul Design Biennial

Presented in the scope of the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial, which is organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, Empathy Sessions is a selection of film works that expand the notion of empathy.


Pera Learning

Learning Programs for Kids
5th Istanbul Design Biennial

Pera Museum’s Learning Programs and İKSV Alt Kat are hosting, in parallel to the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), colorful online workshops for school groups and ages of 7-12 from October 20th through November 14th, 2020.

Baby King

Baby King

1638, the year Louis XIV was born –his second name, Dieudonné, alluding to his God-given status– saw the diffusion of a cult of maternity encouraged by the very devout Anne of Austria, in thanks for the miracle by which she had given birth to an heir to the French throne. Simon François de Tours (1606-1671) painted the Queen in the guise of the Virgin Mary, and the young Louis XIV as the infant Jesus, in the allegorical portrait now in the Bishop’s Palace at Sens.

The Success of an Artist

The Success of an Artist

Pera Museum presents an exhibition of French artist Félix Ziem, one of the most original landscape painters of the 19th century. The exhibition Wanderer on the Sea of Light presents Ziem as an artist who left his mark on 19th century painting and who is mostly known for his paintings of Istanbul and Venice, where the city and the sea are intertwined.

Serpent Head

Serpent Head

The Greek god Apollo and his son Asklepios presided over the realm of medicine and healing. Apollo was also the god of light and sun, whose solar symbolism and association with medicine would become linked to Christ the Physician, and the resurrected.