16th Lyon Biennale: Semiha Berksoy

Lyon, France

The works of the late Semiha Berksoy presented at the 16th Lyon Biennale titled ‘Manifesto of Fragility’ in the curation of Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath. Postponed due to the pandemic, the biennale explores trans-historical narratives of fragility and resistance and confronts them through several hundred works of art, objects and archival documents.

Semiha Berksoy is among the most important artists of the early republican era and one of the first internationally known Turkish artists. Berksoy was cast in the first Turkish sound film in 1931 and the first Turkish opera commissioned by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1934. In 1939, for the 75th birthday of Richard Strauss in Berlin, she sang the role of Ariadne in ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’, becoming the first Turkish prima donna to perform on stage in Europe.  While Berksoy painted throughout her life, having studied art as a teenager, it was only in the 1960s that she started focusing more on painting. Besides her accomplishments as a singer, Berksoy’s work in fine art has also gained wide international recognition. She passed away in 2004 in Istanbul at the age of 94.