CONTEMPORARY ISTANBUL’S 20’th EDITION PRESENTS FOCUS AMERICA AND A TWO-DAY PUBLIC PROGRAMME ON ART’S SHIFTING LANDSCAPE

CONTEMPORARY ISTANBUL’S 20’th EDITION PRESENTS FOCUS AMERICA AND A TWO-DAY PUBLIC PROGRAMME ON ART’S SHIFTING LANDSCAPE

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24–28 September 2025 | Tersane Istanbul

Istanbul, July 2025 — This September, Contemporary Istanbul (CI) proudly celebrates its 20th anniversary with a milestone edition, in partnership with Akbank, at a historic Ottoman shipyard transformed into a vibrant cultural hub on the Golden Horn.

This year Contemporary Istanbul (CI) presents Focus America, spotlighting influential galleries and voices from across the United States, alongside a two-day public programme examining the evolving global art landscape. Focus Americabrings together a group of galleries and influential art professionals whose work and collecting practices are shaping contemporary art discourse in the U.S.

Institutions represented among this year’s guests include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Brooklyn Museum, Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as a number of private collectors based in New York, Seattle, and California. 

The invited galleries include: 

• Amanita (New York)
• Heft Gallery (New York)
• Revolver Galería (New York / Buenos Aires)
• Madison Gallery (California)
• Leila Heller Gallery (New York / Dubai)
• Pontone / Friedrichs Pontone (New York / London)

While Focus America concentrates on the U.S., CI is also pleased to welcome guests from institutions in Canada, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Toronto Biennial of Art, the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and MAC Montréal, reflecting ongoing dialogue between Istanbul and a broad North American arts community.

Contemporary Istanbul (CI) is also pleased to present PASSAGE & MARITIME, a site-specific light installation by Grimanesa Amorós, the New York-based Peruvian-American artist known for her large-scale sculptures using LED technology. Installed around the clock tower and lobby of The Peninsula Hotel—formerly the Çinili Han transit hall—the work responds to Istanbul’s history as a site of passage and exchange. Using red LED tubing, custom lighting sequences, and reflective surfaces, Amorós evokes the flows of people, memory, and time that shape the city. PASSAGEreflects on how architecture absorbs movement and transformation, illuminating the dualities of departure and arrival, interior and exterior, past and present.

MARITIME, deriving from the Latin word maritimus, meaning “of the sea,” rhythmically explores the oceans and waters. In this artwork by Grimanesa Amorós, the light formation becomes a vessel, one that carries memory, movement, and light across expanded geographies. Referencing nautical history and ancient modes of navigation, the piece invites viewers to consider how journeys—physical, historical, and emotional—are charted across both water and time, along with the untold and spoken stories of the waves of adventure, while also commenting on the unbalanced state of our seas. MARITIME reflects on the human spirit’s quest to seek, or as the artist calls it, to embrace the “romance with the unknown,” becoming a nexus of past, present, and future, embodying movement and the intangible routes through which we navigate our identities and places that inspire us.

CIF Dialogues 2025: Disrupted Coordinates

On 24–25 September, the Contemporary Istanbul Foundation (CIF) will host its annual talks programme, CIF Dialogues 2025. This year’s theme, Disrupted Coordinates: Istanbul and the Shifting Landscape of Art, explores how cultural actors respond to geopolitical, technological, and social upheaval.

Speakers include:

•          Jennifer Stockman (President Emeritus, Guggenheim Museum)

•          Anne Pasternak (Director, Brooklyn Museum)

•          Ahu Antmen (Director, Sabancı Museum)

•          Jean Cooney (Director, Times Square Arts; VP of Arts and Culture, Times Square Alliance)

•          Thomas Girst (Global Head of Cultural Engagement, BMW)

•          Pierre Sigg (Collector, Founder of the Sigg Art Foundation), 

•         Ulrich Schruath (Artistic Director, UBS Digital Art Museum

Panel discussions will explore topics such as digital art’s evolving role, collecting practices beyond the Western canon, architecture and cultural memory, and the question of how cities can remain responsive to artistic and civic needs.

Returning once again to Tersane Istanbul, CI’s 20th edition invites reflection on two decades of artistic engagement. Rooted in a city where East meets West, this year’s fair reaffirms Istanbul’s position as a growing center for cultural connectivity and dynamic transformation.