Meeting Point

Are we ready to experience the “Meeting Point” at the 6th Istanbul Children and Youth Art Biennial between April and May? We are aware of the creativity of our children and young people, and so, at the 6th Children and Youth Art Biennial, we are calling on you once again with a new concept open to miracles: “Meeting Point”.

We first made this invitation in 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic, which affected not only us but the whole world, kept us from coming together. From March 2020, because of Covid-19, we could not leave our homes for a long time; we tried to follow our lessons remotely and to keep creating all the same. The pandemic has now become part of our lives. So what will be the consequences of this process, which is set to reshape our lives in an unprecedented way? Will humanity manage to sustain the structures it has built?

This is where the importance of the theme “Meeting Point” emerges once again. Once more, we will turn the lens of “art” on the phenomena we encounter in the context of the “self”, “place” and “space”. How do children and young people respond to the problems they encounter, live through and face in their own worlds? What do they think and feel? Through their experiences, at which points of these problems do they meet and multiply, and help others multiply? At the “Meeting Point”, we can come together to talk about the qualities that make us similar to or different from one another, discuss them and express them in different ways.

So under which subject will we express ourselves and our surroundings? Let us not forget that, like ecosystems, social and economic systems exist in interdependence! While natural resources are rapidly being used up, our soil, water resources and atmosphere continue to be rapidly polluted. Can we change the role in our lives of the Earth, the place where we open our eyes to life? What will we do when we face humanity’s struggle against hunger on the one hand and the causes of nutritional imbalance on the other? What is our priority: The climate? Our carbon footprint? Obesity? Hunger? The pandemic? Where will we meet? Although today’s frenzied consumer society meets at many common points on digital networks, in the real world it somehow fails to come together. It is as if we are in a deep sleep – the depths of a virtual sleep.

Will our children and young people meet in the computer games of the virtual world, or on social media networks? Or in the ecosystem reality of a tree’s disappearance? Perhaps what we need to do is turn the lens on the frenzy of consumer society. On the other hand, our young people, whose awareness of the need to protect cultural heritage grows as they come to know its treasures, may perhaps meet at the point of protecting that heritage. The meeting point, sometimes examined under a magnifying glass in its micro–macro reality, may perhaps lead future generations to explore the infinite depths of space and – as they witness the destruction of our Earth, home to the only form of life we know of in the Solar System – to search for other worlds.

Around this year’s concept, “Meeting Point”, our children and young people will turn the lens on the reality of the world we live in: together they will research, observe, discuss and produce projects, proposing methods and solutions. Perhaps they will focus on global issues, perhaps on regional differences, the problems of the cities they live in, global economic problems or what the pandemic has brought. Or perhaps they will meet on common ground simply to raise awareness or to play. Who knows?

At which points do we meet and part? At which points do the points that part come together again? What might lead points to join and meet? Whatever our answers, between 20 April and 20 May 2022 we look forward to meeting the creative art projects that children and young people will produce at the “Meeting Point”.

Fırat Arapoğlu, Curator