Contemporary Istanbul is back for its 21st edition, running September 23–27 at Tersane Istanbul, with Akbank as main partner. Here’s what’s actually worth knowing before you go.
The basics
VIP preview lands on September 23, with the fair opening to the public September 24 through 27. This year’s edition pulls in more than 70 galleries from 24 countries — 20 of them showing at Contemporary Istanbul for the very first time — with over 1,500 works from more than 500 artists on view.
Two new initiatives worth watching
CI21 launches Focus: Asia, a two-year programme built around the region’s rapidly shifting contemporary art landscape, alongside New Grounds, a debut platform designed to give young and emerging galleries a bigger international stage.
The special projects to build your route around
Beyond the gallery booths, the fair’s special projects section is where the bigger institutional names show up. Jaume Plensa’s seven-metre public sculpture Juana anchors the outdoor programme, while Chisato Matsumoto gets a presentation in collaboration with Pearl Lam Gallery. Curator Wai Kung brings Cao Taiping: In the Wake, Shaikh Rashid Al Khalifa contributes an installation project, and there’s a dedicated showcase for Shozo Shimamoto. Rounding things out are selections drawn from the Sigg Foundation and the MIA Art Collection.
Talks programme
The Contemporary Istanbul Foundation’s CIF Dialogues returns under the theme The Long and Winding Road — a series of conversations threading through art, culture, and global exchange across the fair’s run.
Dirimart’s presentation is one to seek out
At Hall B101, Istanbul gallery Dirimart is showing 35 artists across generations and geographies, organised loosely around memory, perception, the body, and nature, spanning painting, sculpture, photography, video, and installation.
The lineup reads like a compressed history of Turkish modern art — Âbidin Elderoğlu, Albert Bitran, Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, Fahrelnissa Zeid, and Jak İhmalyan all feature — alongside artists whose careers have carried Turkish art onto the international stage, including Sarkis, Canan Tolon, Ayşe Erkmen, and İnci Eviner. A younger generation gets space too: Çiğdem Aky, Ebru Duruman, Jennifer İpekel, Güçlü Öztekin, Seçkin Pirim, and Çağla Ulusoy among them.
That thread extends outward through international names like Ghada Amer, Tony Cragg, Georgina Gratrix, Gregor Hildebrandt, Karin Kneffel, Jin Meyerson, Anselm Reyle, Ugo Rondinone, Jorinde Voigt, Summer Wheat, and Peter Zimmermann. Filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan brings a perspective shaped by decades in photography and cinema, alongside work from Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt, Nasan Tur, Olivia Sterling, Emma Stern, and Gabriela Těthalová.
Dirimart is also debuting Yulia Iosilzon and Andreas Schmitten at the fair, and the booth itself won’t sit still — it’s being refreshed daily, so a visit on opening day and one on closing day genuinely won’t look the same.