ArtDog Istanbul

Hale Tenger’s exhibition Hale Tenger / Borders / Borders, on view at The Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) until February 8, brings together works produced over more than thirty years. We spoke with Tenger about this comprehensive exhibition, curated by Rachel Cieśla.

How did the idea for the exhibition at The Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth emerge, and what kind of working process did you have with the institution’s curator?

Curator Rachel Cieśla and I had never met before. When she contacted Galeri Nev Istanbul and wrote that she wanted to organize a comprehensive exhibition with me, it came as a surprise to all of us. Rachel Cieśla is the Senior Curator at the Simon Lee Foundation Institute of Contemporary Asian Art at AGWA. In Australia, there are other state museums named after regions, and AGWA is one of them.

We held our first meeting online in February 2022. She later came to Istanbul in September, and we had a long meeting in my studio. The preparation process continued until the exhibition opened in August 2025. During this intense process, which lasted more than three years, the conceptual framework and the selection of works gradually took shape. As in every curatorial process, there were additions and omissions along the way. Final decisions were influenced not only by the exhibition’s conceptual backbone but also by the budget. To fully grasp how bold and ambitious this exhibition is, one must consider the distance between Australia and Turkey. Three large-scale installations were transported from the Arter Collection in Turkey. Even the logistics of transporting these works involved extraordinarily high costs.

In this exhibition, the concept of “borders” is addressed in many dimensions through your works. How did you establish a connection between the geographical foundation of your practice and Australia?

The exhibition was realized with the support of the Simon Lee Foundation Institute of Contemporary Asian Art, established within AGWA in 2022. Under the leadership of Rachel Cieśla as Chief Creative Curator, this department focuses on contemporary art from Asia and the Asian diaspora that has often been overlooked.

The selection spans a broad period, from the beginning of my practice to my most recent works. Rachel structured the exhibition around the concept of “borders,” encompassing not only physical but also political, mental, and emotional boundaries. The works are rooted in geographies centered on Turkey and the Middle East. Thus, the exhibition aims to establish a cultural dialogue between two geographically distant communities.