The Uses of Art

The exhibition in Istanbul attempts to provoke original responses and readings from its users of what SALT Galata, as a cultural institution, is or could be.

What are the implications of urgent conditions, responsibilities, and goals for cultural institutions? These are some of the key issues discussed by those participating in conversations across and beyond the six European museums that make up the L’Internationale confederation. In April 2017 the five-year L’Internationale program The Uses of Art will culminate in a series of simultaneous activities: exhibitions, (online) publications, discursive events, and more.

Top: Laure Prouvost, We would be floating away from the dirty past, 2015. Photo Wilfried Petzi, 2015. Courtesy the artist, carlier | gebauer (Berlin) and Galerie Nathalie Obadia (Paris). Above: Futurefarmers, Seed Journey, 2016. Courtesy the artists.

SALT’s final L’Internationale exhibition attempts to provoke original responses and readings from its users of what SALT Galata, as a cultural entity, is or could be. Four artistic interventions/architectural gestures – by Abbas Akhavan, Refik Anadol, Futurefarmers, and Laure Prouvost – embrace the user through their reinvigoration of previously under-used aspects of the building and its resources, such as the archive, bringing to the foreground suggestions of different potential functions or possibilities that temporarily reframe the institution.

Left: Refik Anadol, image from the SALT research data process, 2017. Courtesy the artist. Right: Abbas Akhavan, Untitled Curtains, 2008. Photo Kevin Schmidt, courtesy the artist


20 April – 11 June 2017
The Uses of Art
SALT Galata
Bankalar Cd. 11, Istanbul