Sharjah is a unique place surrounded by heritage and change. With the presence of humans in the area dating back 125,000 years, this has long been a site of origin, transition and an unknowable future.

Today Sharjah is part of a novel national federation in the process of imagining itself along a time-space continuum unlike, but intimately linked to its neighbouring nations. As the emirate’s future history is written through urban development, heritage site restoration, interdependent transnational economies and a diverse everyday culture, Sharjah Biennial 12: The past, the present, the possible has invited fifty-one artists and groups to imagine and reflect upon its ambitions, possibilities and being. A biennial can be a dynamic structure for such considerations, and SB12 embraces this provisional format with a focus on timely experimentation from present and past.

With a focus on new commissions set amidst an ahistorical wealth of abstraction, The past, the present, the possible signals a distrust of narrative certitude in favour of unexpected simultaneities and potential alliances. Stepping into the arena of contemporary art in Sharjah are international artists involved in many conversations, confrontational and collaborative, formal and existential. Together their works offer both corporeal experience and meditative pause in this particularly disharmonious and decadent moment in human history.

Eungie Joo
Curator

Basel Abbas*
Ruanne Abou-Rahme*
Etel Adnan*
Babak Afrassiabi*
Abdullah Al Saadi*
Rheim Alkadhi*
Ayreen Anastas*
Leonor Antunes*
Uriel Barthélémi*
Eric Baudelaire
Mark Bradford*
Unnikrishnan C*
Chimurenga*
Nikhil Chopra*
Saloua Raouda Choucair
Chung Chang-Sup
Abraham Cruzvillegas*
Papy Ebotani
Rene Gabri*
Ahmad Ghossein*
Im Heung-soon*
Iman Issa*
Michael Joo*
Maryam Kashani*
Mohammed Kazem
Hassan Khan*
Kristine Khouri*
Beom Kim
Byron Kim*
Lala Rukh
Lee Kit*
Jac Leirner*
Faustin Linyekula
Jawshing Arthur Liou
Cinthia Marcelle*
Rodney McMillian*
Julie Mehretu*
mixrice*
Asunción Molinos Gordo
Eduardo Navarro*
Damián Ortega*
Rasha Salti*
Hassan Sharif
Taro Shinoda*
Gary Simmons*
Nasrin Tabatabai*
Rayyane Tabet*
Rirkrit Tiravanija*
Adrián Villar Rojas*
Danh Vo
Xu Tan
Haegue Yang*
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye*
Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara
Fahrelnissa Zeid

*presenting new works