17.12.25
Claudia Pagès
ART FORUM: Claudia Pages - 18th Istanbul Biennial, text by Kaya Genç
"...Tohmé’s curation brought a welcome synergy among works, primarily in the smaller venues, such as the former Cone Factory, a onetime ice cream factory that was recently transformed into a concert and events venue. Accessible through a brick facade covered with graffiti in a Karaköy bystreet, this historic raw-brick building played host to Claudia Pagès Rabal’s The Night of Five Defence Towers, 2025, a thirty-four-minute film projected on ceiling-mounted LED screens. Shot inside a theater using a 360-degree camera, and with the artist as the central narrator, the work orchestrates a choreography of four performers speaking in English, Catalan, and Spanish. Pagès muses on cartography, surveillance, refuge, and control as her camera wanders above and below the performers who take shelter at the foot of a tower. The elaborate use of panoptic viewpoints offered an engaging critique of surveillance technologies, replicating the politics of verticality of watchful towers for a modern setting."
Kaya Genç
Tags: exhibition
Claudia Pagès Rabal, Five Defence Towers, 2025, five light boxes with digital print on acrylic, aluminum, LED strip, custom LED screen, iron structure, digital video (color, sound, 34 minutes). Installation view. Photo: Sahir Ugur Eren.