IBA Stage: Sharjah Biennial 16 – Zeynep Öz

Zeynep Öz. Photo: Öykü Çakar-Smith

IBA Stage: Sharjah Biennial 16
June 10, 2025 (Tuesday)
1:00 pm (Sharjah/GMT+4)

With this final entry in our curator series, we turn our attention to Zeynep Öz, whose curatorial practice combines rigorous research, editorial precision, and a deeply collaborative spirit. As one of five curators of Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry, Zeynep Öz brings to the project a sensitivity to place, memory, and infrastructure.

She is the co-founder and former director of the Produce series (I, II, III), which from 2011 to 2017 commissioned over 30 new works and generated several publications. Across her projects, ranging from Abou Farid’s War by Omar Mismar for st_age/TBA21 to the Bahar off-site chapter of Sharjah Biennial 13, Öz has approached curating as a platform for discursive entanglement, artistic risk, and long-form inquiry.

Her curatorial carrier spans institutions such as the Bonnefantenmuseum, Sharjah Art Foundation, SALT, and the Venice Biennale, where she curated the Pavilion of Turkey in 2019. Alongside her exhibitions, she has contributed extensively to pedagogical frameworks through her teaching at Boğaziçi University and her involvement in Beirut’s Home Workspace Program.

At SB16, Zeynep’s contribution is marked by a nuanced engagement with narrative structures, how stories are carried, broken, repaired, and reimagined across time and space. Her curatorial methodology, at once analytic and intuitive, proposes art as a means of gathering and dispersing meaning in uncertain conditions.

Join us on June 10 for the final session of our IBA Stage event, where Zeynep Öz and Megan Tamati-Quennell will reflect on their respective curatorial processes and experience in shaping this biennial.

Stay tuned for more news from us on this upcoming IBA Stage event and keep following communications on the Sharjah Biennial here.

To have the possibility to hear and discuss with the individuals behind biennials has been a key component of what we believe IBA can offer to our members and the wider public and we value your participation through our live streams. As always IBA Stage events are meant as a moment to hear about a project through its makers and have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session at the end of the presentation.

Click here to register for the second part of the event!

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