The Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İSKV) has appointed Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu as co-curators of the 19th Istanbul Biennial, which is scheduled to run from September 18 to November 14, 2027. Having worked together since 2007, most recently as artistic directors for the eighth Yokohama Triennale in 2024, the pair will come together once again to develop the biennial’s conceptual framework, with further details to be announced in the coming months. 

Liu Ding (b. 1976) is an artist and curator based in Beijing whose work across painting, installation, photography, and performance examines subjectivity and individual agency within the shifting political and art-historical conditions of contemporary China. He has exhibited at major institutions worldwide over the last two decades, including at M+ in Hong Kong (2025), the Gwangju Museum of Art in South Korea (2024), and MoMA PS1 in New York (2015). He has also taken part in biennials such as the Busan Biennale (2018) and the Yinchuan Biennale (2018), and currently teaches exhibition display at Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan.

Art historian and curator Carol Yinghua Lu (b. 1977) currently serves as the director of Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum. Her previous roles include artistic director and senior curator of OCAT Shenzhen (2012–15), guest curator at Museion in Bolzano (2013), and China researcher for Asia Art Archive (2005–07). She has contributed to publications such as e-flux journal, frieze—where she was a contributing editor from 2008 to 2018—and The Exhibitionist, among others. Lu holds a PhD in art history from the University of Melbourne.

In a press release, the pair stated that the 19th edition of the biennial “calls for a dire shift in focus” amid a “landscape of extreme political volatility and the pervasive influence of algorithmic technologies.” They continue: “We seek to move beyond reactive commentary and technological escapism to recognize and reclaim the primary agency of art and the individual.” 

Emmanuelle Richter is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.