Deniz Kirkali

Conference Report. December 2024
I attended the CIMAM Annual Conference 2024 titled “Sustainable Futures: How? When? For Whom?” between the dates of 6 to 8 December, 2024 in Los Angeles as a Travel Grantee. The conference program kicked off with an inspirational opening speech by Mark Bradford in which he elaborated on ways of sustaining various partnerships in his projects and how to create safe spaces and prioritize the desires of his partners. His triangles which he used as a tool to elaborate on some complex relationships that he built and sustained in some of his large-scale projects set the tone in terms of where to begin when we’re thinking of sustainable futures and really understand the various stakes at hand.
Then, we listened to the experiences and efforts at sustainability of some large sized institutions across the globe such as Guggenheim Bilbao and LACMA. The presentation of John Kenneth Paranada, the Curator of Art and Climate Change at the Sainsbury Center was a highlight for me in terms of the scope of their research on climate sciences. Being partly based in London, I am very much interested in visiting the Sainsbury Center for their upcoming show in March and learning more about his practice there. Sarah Zewde’s presentation introduced the term “museum landscape” which is an interesting cultural lens into the earth that I will be thinking about. Chus Martinez brought up some very important questions during the panel discussion and invited us to imagine a process for a provocative set of questions. I also found the discussion on development versus growth to be quite a significant moment of the day.
On the second day of the conference, the opening presentation by Zita Cobb, the CEO and co-founder of Shorefast at Fogo Island was one of the highlights of the whole conference for me. I am extremely impressed by the work they are doing there and their phrase “turning money into fish” will be a concept I will be thinking about in relation to my own curatorial practice around certain localities. Their question “What do embodied, social and meaning-seeking creatures need?” also heavily resonated with me.
Mai Abu ElDahab, director of Mophradat, an institution that is doing remarkable work in the region, reminded the importance of staying relevant and being moved by what one does. I really appreciated how their programme doesn’t merely react to the existing conditions but initiates and create new encounters and approaches to these conditions. We also listened to a beautiful clip from a performance by Haig Aivazian and Noor Abed. Artist presentations by Ibrahim Mahama, Edgar Calel and Taloi Havini were very interesting perspectives to working with communities, finding alternative ways to collaborate, create rituals and offerings within the art contexts and in doing so provide alternative to mainstream modes of production and display. Finally, I am very happy to have seen Walid Raad’s performative intervention, which was very original, interesting, thought-provoking and somehow a very creative way to address some of these concepts and concerns that were brought up during the three-day conference. It was a great way to shift to a different registrar and engage with an artistic practice while staying with the complicated questions we were working through. Overall, I really enjoyed most of the presentations and tried to find ways to connect them to my own curatorial practice and the kind of spaces and encounters I create. The points that were raised during the General Assembly in terms of giving voice to younger, emerging professionals who might operate in quite different contexts, institutions of smaller scale and who have varying needs and expectations were very important and fruitful for further conferences.
Biography
Deniz Kirkali (b. 1992) is a curator based between Istanbul and London. She is currently the Project Curator at The Showroom in London. She has co-founded topsoil, a transnational curatorial and research collective, and Garp Sessions, a summer residency program in Babakale, Turkey.
She was the curator of Sweet Garden of Vanishing Desires as ArtOn, Istanbul; Reciprocity Muscles at Cala, Berlin; My Dear Friends at Depo, Istanbul; and Make it Hot, Cool it Down, Turn it Over in London; and the assistant curator of the 10th BACA Award Exhibition at Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, the Pavilion of Turkey at the 58th Venice Biennale, and BAHAR, the Istanbul offsite project of Sharjah Biennial 13.
Her writings have been published in international magazines and platforms such as AQNB, Flash Art, this is tomorrow, Cogito and Art Unlimited. She is the co-author of Otomy, published in 2022 and winner of Volumes Book Award 2022. She has done residencies with School of Commons (Zurich), Slavs & Tatars (Berlin) and ARCAthens (Athens).
Deniz received her MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths College, University of London and her BS in Media, Culture and Communication from New York University. She is currently a PhD candidate in Advanced Practices at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Deniz Kirkali, Curator and Co-Founder, Garp Sessions, topsoil, Istanbul, Turkey, has been awarded by SAHA, Istanbul.