Eda Berkmen

Conference Report. November 2023

I am grateful for having been given the opportunity to participate in the 55th CIMAM Annual Conference in Buenos Aires, which provided me with great insight regarding the current challenges facing museums today, as well as, with motivation for future endeavours in arts and its institutions. At a time and place when being an art professional became most closely associated with feelings of isolation and lack of power or place in society, this organization in its entirety, kindled hope and empowerment, in addition to posing resolutions, by providing examples of brilliant projects and ideas from around the world.

Under the overarching title, “The Co-Creative Museum: Social Agency, Ethics, and Heritage,” one of the biggest achievements of the conference was its success in establishing a sense of community. In the welcome address, Suhanya Raffel thanked all travel grantees for making the effort to apply and making it to Argentina at a time when it gets more and more difficulty to come together. Following Raffel’s generous and genuine remarks, we learned in the introductions of other members of the CIMAM board, that most of them also came to their first CIMAM conferences as travel grantees. The warm welcoming spirit, the caring mood and non-hierarchical attitude that was conveyed by both the teams of CIMAM and the hosting institution, El Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, set the tone for and emanated through the conference and the daily interactions between the participants, making this experience exemplary for the motto ‘practice what you preach’, which I think is rare and extraordinary.

Throughout the three-day conference, each speaker, in the twenty minutes allocated to them, delivered concise, informative, eloquent, and mind-opening presentations, of which I am only able to cite only in a small part here. Pablo Lafuente’s reminder to take time to reflect on why we do what we do and warning against the use of museums as tools of validation, linger with me, as well as his questions on whether the burning down of any institution today would cause a public uprising. Another useful insight was Diana Leyton’s introduction of the concept of “abilitism” as prejudice against bodies that don’t fit in with regular standards and reclamation of such bodies in the anti-inclusion manifesto with a “salute to ‘Def’ ancestors”. Leyton’s emphasis on accessibility as an absolute necessity (not a means for another end) and call for art institutions to lead the way for change in public policy rung out as a concrete response to Chus Martinez’s belief that we can collectively produce new forms of intelligence/express complex systems and ideas to challenge society and activate civil society. Similarly, teresa cisneros’ appeal that we first and foremost discover and accept ourselves as enablers (of prejudice, exclusion, extractivism) and provide the space and understanding for others to do so, was revelatory in triggering a long-lasting change in behavioral patterns. I think these were only some of the substantial tactics that were outlined in rethinking and recalibrating our language in institutions, which was defined as a common goal in many of the other presentations. Last but not least, hearing about the diligent work of Elvira Espejo Ayca (as part of Museo Nacional de Etnografia y Folklore in Bolivia), Marian Pastor Roces (as part of Mapping Phillipine Material Culture Online Database), Luma Hamdan (tending to the continuity of Palestinian heritage through the ages as part of Darat al Funun), Maria Belen Correa (keeping TransArchives in Argentina) and Sidhi Vhisatya (preserving Queer archives in Indonesia), reemphasized the possibility and importance of excavating and protecting documents, testimonies and archives, for standing against wide-spread disinformation and the rise of fascist tendencies around the world.

After uniting with colleagues who share common goals and humanitarian values thanks to the 55th Annual CIMAM Conference, I returned home inspired, empowered, hopeful, and motivated to continue my work in this field. The conference was also fruitful in providing ample opportunities to connect with individuals to develop together, existing and new projects. Finally, thanks to the online Rolling Contemporary Argentinian Art Map and the intense visits program that took us all around the art galleries, institutions, collector spaces, and artist studios, around Buenos Aires, I now feel well-acquainted with the Argentine contemporary art, which I found out to be beautiful, stimulating, and prolific.

Bio

I am currently working as a full-time curator at Arter, an arts and cultural center in Istanbul, with an emphasis on an exhibition program focusing on contemporary art. My position comprises of contributing to the development of Arter’s multi-disciplinary program as part of the programming board, curating one to three exhibitions per year and providing all associated written materials, including the curatorial text for the exhibition book. My role also consists of supporting the decision-making processes for the preservation, development and display of the Arter Collection, as well as cooperating with the Learning Program on organizing interpretation events, guided tours, workshops for children and adults.

I was born in Istanbul in 1985. I completed my Bachelor’s Degree in History of Art at Yale University in 2007. I lived and worked in New York and London as a paralegal at Cravath, Swaine and Moore LLP for two years; an episode which not only provided me with the time and finances to see/witness some of the most prominent or marginal cultural events and venues in the world. Between 2009-2011, I worked as the coordinator of Proje4L/Elgiz Museum, Turkey’s first private collection museum of contemporary art. In 2011, I was recruited by Galerist, one of the most established commercial contemporary art galleries in Istanbul. As the artistic director, I was responsible for the programming of exhibitions and art fairs, for managing relations with the artists (with assistance of artist liasons), including production of works, exhibitions and publications. I had the privilege of working closely with both Nil Yalter and the estate of Semiha Berksoy, studying and organizing their archives, working on their solo exhibitions and monographs. I also had a chance to partake in major art fairs and get acquainted with the workings of the international art market

In 2016 I earned my MA in “Culture, Criticism and Curation” from UAL / Central Saint Martins, where I co-curated with my classmates, “Saving South Bank Centre’s 60s Buildings Project” and “June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive” As part of my studies, I wrote on “The Socially Transformative Potential in Works of Nil Yalter” and consequently was invited by Arter to curate the first comprehensive solo exhibition of the artist; I joined Arter’s curatorial team in 2017.

I took part in moving/transforming Arter from a mid-sized exhibition space located in a repurposed residential building into a museum scale, multi-disciplinary arts and culture center in its new purpose-built venue that includes five galleries, a library, a bookshop and two high-technology performing arts halls. This transformation brought opportunities and challenges not only with regards to the expansion of the space, the team and the program but also, for strategies in public engagement because of the new building’s location in Dolapdere, a low-income neighborhood, occupied mostly with immigrant workers and their families.

At Arter, I curated the solo exhibitions and contributed to the publications of Can Aytekin (2018), Inci Furni (2019), Alev Ebuzziya Siesbye (2020), Cengiz Çekil (2023) and Eva Kotatkova (2023), along with two group exhibitions; “What Time Is It?” (2019) with a selection of works from Arter Collection (co-curated with Emre Baykal) and “Rounded By Sleep”. In line with my research on the work of Nil Yalter, the exhibitions of Çekil, Siesbye and “What Time Is It?” enabled me to deepen my research into history of Turkish art, with particular emphasis on the socially transformative role of art of the 1960-1990s. In similar vein, with exhibitions of Furni and Kotatkova and “Rounded by Sleep” I experimented with stretching and reconsidering institutional labels and boundaries in order to find new ways for co-existence and co-production.