Bengi Ünsal: Gen Z are increasingly “genre fluid”
Bengi Ünsal: Gen Z are increasingly “genre fluid”
When I meet Bengi Ünsal, the new director of the Institute for Contemporary Arts (ICA), at a café in Hackney, she’s energised after a busy morning. Tomorrow she’ll be launching her first annual programme since taking the top job, which also happens to coincide with the ICA’s 75th anniversary. “As an audience member, I felt that the ICA had become more about contemporary art, rather than contemporary arts,” she tells me. “It’s a multi-arts space, not a museum or gallery!” Her vision is for the Institute to rediscover its multi-disciplinary roots, a “rebalancing” rather than a completely new direction. Inferno, a queer club collective, will host a take-over in December. A new music series, Astrals, will see established producers curate emerging artists. Numerous workshops and book launches are inked in too. “This programme is a good introduction to what we have in mind,” she says. “It’s the tip of the iceberg.”
