Akram Zaatari is participating in the 18th Istanbul Biennial with his works, which can be found at the Galata Greek School. He is known for engaging film, photography, theory, and archives to examine the circulation of images, surveillance regimes, and narratives of political resistance. Zaatari is also a co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation, which has been preserving and exhibiting photographs from Southwest Asia, North Africa, and the Arab diaspora since 1997. 

At the Biennial, Zaatari presents sixteen acrylic paintings on paper derived from his observations of men’s wrestling competitions. Depicting exposed torsos on finely gridded graph paper reminiscent of coordinates and mapping, the works highlight the tension, force, and balance at play in oil wrestling, a practice still widespread in Turkey, Iran, and the Balkans. In Olive Green (2020), Pehlivans grapple through controlled positions and locks, their entwined bodies turning into a struggle between intimacy, strength, and technique, while Crimson Red (2021) portrays Russian athletes weighing in before matches.