This spring, I traveled to Mardin, southeastern Türkiye, to hold my solo show parallel with the Mardin Biennial, carrying with me all the familiar expectations an artist inevitably develops before entering a city hosting a major international exhibition. There was, of course, the excitement of presenting work within a larger curatorial framework, the anticipation of encountering artists from different backgrounds and disciplines, and the intellectual curiosity that accompanies any event ambitious enough to position itself within the increasingly influential geography of global contemporary art.

Yet, what I had not anticipated was that the city itself would become the most compelling work I encountered.

Long before I stepped into a biennial venue, Mardin had already begun speaking.

Few cities possess such a remarkable ability to compress centuries into a single gaze. From its elevated position overlooking the Mesopotamian plains, Mardin appears less like a city than an archaeological conversation between civilizations. Its honey-colored stone architecture absorbs light in a manner that changes almost imperceptibly throughout the day. Its narrow streets unfold as layers of memory rather than routes of circulation and its cultural history, shaped by centuries of coexistence among different faiths, languages and communities, offers a rare reminder that plurality is not a contemporary invention but one of humanity's oldest achievements.

As I moved between exhibition spaces, courtyards, historical buildings and unexpected corners transformed into temporary sites of artistic encounter, I found myself asking whether there could be a more suitable city for a biennial. Unlike the neutral environment of the white cube, which deliberately isolates artworks from the complexities of life, Mardin insists upon context. Nothing exists in a vacuum. Every stone wall carries traces of previous generations. Every building contains stories older than the artworks temporarily inhabiting it. Every vista reminds visitors that culture is not something displayed but something accumulated.

A biennial in Mardin therefore, feels fundamentally different from a biennial in many contemporary metropolitan centres. Here, art does not arrive to create meaning from nothing; it arrives to negotiate meaning with a place that already possesses an extraordinary density of memory. The city refuses to become merely a backdrop but it participates. This, perhaps, is what impressed me most.

The strongest works were not necessarily the largest, the most technologically sophisticated or the most theoretically ambitious. They were works capable of entering into dialogue with their surroundings. They understood that in Mardin, one is not simply exhibiting within a city; one is exhibiting within a living archive.

And it was precisely while walking through that archive that a larger question began to occupy my thoughts: Why do artists seek biennials in the first place?

More specifically, why has participation in a biennial become one of the most desired forms of validation within contemporary art?

And perhaps most importantly, should it be?

The question may sound deceptively simple, yet it touches upon one of the defining realities of contemporary artistic life. Over the past three decades, the biennial has evolved from an exhibition format into something considerably more influential. It has become a mechanism through which artistic visibility is distributed, reputations are established, careers are accelerated, and cultural narratives are shaped. For many emerging artists, participation in a major biennial represents not merely an opportunity but a milestone, a symbolic confirmation that they have entered the international conversation.

Yet standing in a city that has witnessed empires rise and disappear, I could not help wondering whether contemporary art sometimes places too much faith in temporary structures of recognition. Because while biennials may last several months, cities endure for centuries.

And while institutions inevitably change, the fundamental questions artists ask themselves remain remarkably constant.

Biennial as global stage

The proliferation of biennials throughout the world has unquestionably transformed the geography of contemporary art. For much of the 20th century, artistic legitimacy remained concentrated within a relatively small number of cultural capitals. New York, London, Paris and a handful of European centres largely determined which artists entered international discourse and which remained peripheral to it. The expansion of the biennial model disrupted that concentration of power and created alternative routes toward visibility.

Today, an artist can encounter colleagues from Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe and North America within the same exhibition framework. Conversations that once required years of travel and institutional mediation can occur within a matter of days. Ideas circulate more rapidly. Perspectives intersect more freely. Cultural exchange becomes not an abstract aspiration but a lived experience. This is no small achievement.

Indeed, after spending time in Mardin, meeting artists, curators, writers and visitors from different backgrounds, I was reminded that one of the greatest strengths of biennials lies not in the artworks alone but in the communities they temporarily create. For a brief period, artists who might otherwise never encounter one another are brought into the same intellectual and physical space. New relationships emerge. Collaborations begin. Assumptions are challenged. Horizons expand. In an increasingly polarized world, such encounters possess genuine value.

Yet every successful institution eventually develops its own mythology.

The mythology surrounding biennials often suggests that participation itself represents a form of arrival, as though being included in a major international exhibition constitutes the final destination of artistic practice rather than one experience among many. Young artists absorb this message quickly. Curators, critics, galleries, collectors, and cultural institutions frequently reinforce it, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. The result is the emergence of a professional category that scarcely existed a generation ago: the biennial artist.The term itself is revealing.

We rarely speak of museum artists or exhibition artists. Yet we regularly speak of biennial artists.

Why?

Because the biennial increasingly functions not simply as a venue but as an ecosystem with its own aesthetic expectations, intellectual frameworks and systems of validation. Artists learn these frameworks and how to become legible within a particular institutional environment. There is nothing inherently problematic about this process. Every artistic context possesses conventions. Every audience develops expectations. Every institution operates according to specific priorities.

The danger emerges only when adaptation begins replacing curiosity. When artists start asking what is likely to be selected rather than what genuinely interests them or when visibility gradually displaces inquiry.

At that point, something essential is at risk. Not artistic freedom in any dramatic sense, but artistic unpredictability. And unpredictability has always been one of art's most valuable qualities.

Beyond visibility

Perhaps the most important realization I carried away from Mardin was that meaningful artistic experiences rarely conform to measurable criteria. No visitor leaves a city remembering statistics. No one returns home thinking primarily about attendance figures, institutional partnerships, funding structures or press coverage. What remains are moments.

In many respects, the contemporary art world operates within the same attention economy that shapes the rest of society. Visibility has become one of our most desired currencies. We measure it, quantify it, pursue it and frequently mistake it for significance. Yet visibility and significance are not synonymous: One is immediate; The other requires time.

The distinction is crucial because artists increasingly face pressures not simply to create meaningful work but to remain continuously visible. Social media demands constant presence. Institutions demand constant production. Markets reward constant activity. The result can be a form of professional acceleration that leaves little room for reflection. Yet reflection remains indispensable.

No biennial, regardless of its scale or prestige, can substitute for the solitary process through which artistic ideas are formed. No international platform can replace the slow accumulation of thought, observation, experimentation, failure and revision that ultimately produces meaningful work.

This is perhaps why I find myself increasingly sceptical of any definition of success that relies exclusively upon visibility. Artistic careers unfold over decades, not exhibition cycles. The works that endure are rarely those that responded most efficiently to contemporary expectations. More often, they are the works that remained stubbornly faithful to their own questions.

And yet, despite all of these reservations, despite the risks of institutional conformity, despite the occasional tendency toward repetition that can be observed throughout the global exhibition circuit, despite the temptation to confuse recognition with achievement, I find myself arriving at a conclusion that may appear surprisingly uncomplicated.

Would I participate in another biennial atmosphere? Without hesitation, yes.

Not because biennials represent the highest form of artistic validation or they determine artistic worth or because inclusion guarantees significance, but because at their best, they create something increasingly rare in contemporary life: genuine encounters between cultures, histories, disciplines, artists who might otherwise never meet. And perhaps most importantly, encounters between artworks and audiences capable of seeing them through entirely different lenses.

Mardin reminded me that art does not exist in isolation. It exists within conversations, within communities, within places, and within histories larger than any individual practice. A well-conceived biennial can amplify those conversations in ways few other cultural platforms can achieve.

The challenge, therefore, is not whether artists should participate in biennials, but ensuring that participation never becomes the destination.

A biennial should remain what it was always meant to be: a crossroads rather than a final address, a place where ideas meet, perspectives intersect, artists continue asking questions rather than receiving answers.

To be biennial artist, or not to be?

After Mardin, I find the question less interesting than I once did. The more important question is whether one can remain an independent artist while moving through the biennial world.

For me, the answer is yes.

And if another invitation arrives tomorrow, I would gladly pack my bags again, travel to another city, walk through another unfamiliar landscape, enter another temporary community of artists and thinkers and begin another conversation.

Because while the exhibition will eventually close, the conversations it generates may echo long after the walls are emptied.

And that, perhaps, is the real value of a biennial: the footprints you left behind in that city.