Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Reveries of an Underground Forest (detail), 2019
Carpets, Dimensions variable
Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art
The Toronto Biennial of Art, has named the two artists who will each win 20,000 Canadian dollars, or about $15,000—Abel Rodríguez, who is the first winner of the biennial’s Art Prize, and Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, who has won the Emerging Artist Prize.
Büyüktaşçıyan is an Istanbul-based artist who has on view tan-colored industrial carpets that are presented rolled up and freestanding. In them the artist has carved various small, slightly abstracted patterns that resemble a lost alphabet, aerial views of the disappeared waterways that have been filled throughout Toronto, or even migratory patterns.