Sharjah Biennial 16

In what he describes as the ‘poetic documentary’ Rendezvous, Nikolaj Larsen attempts to capture the accumulated emotion contained within this abstract space.

Hiroji Kubota’s photography is characterised by his ability to find moments of beauty and dignity amid the routines and chaos of human existence.

At the intersection of art and activism, Hank Willis Thomas’ work reframes material from contemporary consumer culture and histories of colonialism, shedding light on the legacy
of oppressive systems and stereotypes.

Shaped by his Iraqi-Jewish heritage, Michael Rakowitz’s work braids together seemingly disparate elements of cultural history,
mythic symbolism, contemporary geopolitics, Pop culture, food and looted artefacts.

Ismaïl Bahri’s experiments with moving image explore notions of duration, scale, visibility and resolution.

Jasbir Puar and Dima Srouji build upon their respective work in architecture, visual art and decolonial theory to produce a collaborative examination of colonial pathologies.

In this dramatic adaptation of Shakespeare's Richard III, the historic setting of late Medieval England is transposed to a fictional setting in the contemporary Middle East.

Almagul Menlibayeva and Bahar Behbahani explore the dialogue between two ancient cultures that border the Caspian Sea on the crossroads of the Middle East and Central Asia.

My work is a result of the different thoughts going on in my mind, or, what I would call the noises in my mind.

Roba Vecchia, The Wheel of Fortune, is a life-sized kaleidoscope which the viewer can enter and become a part of.

Malala Andrialavidrazana works across disciplines to examine communication, dialogue and difference within cross-cultural contexts.

Lantian Xie’s work evolves from careful observation of situations, stories and everyday vernacular that are local to the United Arab Emirates as well as similar places of transience.

My project for the biennial is broad and in four parts, one of which is a long and narrow footpath from the entrance of the museum to the Persian spice market along the Corniche harbour.

On both formal and conceptual levels, artist and filmmaker Roy Dib challenges common notions of space and boundary, weaving together archival material, scripted text and hypothetical circumstances to chronicle the political narratives of our day.

As a filmmaker and artist, Roy Samaha explores the non-linear relationships between images, memory and history through embodied experience.

Jorge Tacla’s Escombros series (signifying 'rubble' or 'debris' in Spanish) depicts a bombed-out cityscape inspired from photographs of Beirut after the July 2006 Israeli War.

Expanding on Paola Yacoub’s interest in the relation between architecture and automate, Sabil-Kuttab Automate (2017) considers architecture’s functional value and capacity as a purveyor of cultural preservation and production.

SB12 presents examples of Choucair’s ‘Duals’, ‘Modules’ and ‘Interforms’, works that recall the autonomous stanzas of Islamic poetry, Sufi longing for divine unity and the biological structure of matter.

In 1990, Samir Khaddaje moved from Beirut to Paris, where he was given a studio and accommodation in the basement of the Cognac-Jay Hospital.

Founded in 1998 by Young-hae Chang and Marc Voge, web art duo YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES creates animated digital literature in Adobe Flash. Set to musical scores, typically jazz, that are often their own, the text is translated into various languages. 

Gabriel Orozco explores the creative associations between overlooked objects in today's world, deliberately blurring the boundaries separating artwork and everyday environment.

The title Saphir (French for sapphire) reflects this, evoking not only the pure maritime light typical of Algiers, but also those flickering glimmers on the horizon that symbolise people’s dreams and aspirations.

In this video, Sarah Abu Abdallah is seen painting the shell of a wrecked car with light pink paint, a gesture of defiance against Saudi Arabia’s prohibition on women drivers, which makes mobility the exclusive privilege of men.

In Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s practice, his pursuit of truth is rooted in a rigorous and obsessive exploration of sound.

Robert MacPherson’s work combines a rigorous conceptual base with observations on ordinary life and people.

Abdullah Al Saadi had the opportunity to explore Brazil during a four-month residency in South America. Inspired by the thirty-eight-metre-tall Christ the Redeemer statue that reigns over Rio de Janeiro, he made Scarecrows (2013)

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An increasingly established painter in the Iranian scene, Shohreh Mehran’s practice subverts representation and seeing.

There never was a script for And the living is easy (2014), Lamia Joreige’s feature film that was shot in Beirut intermittently over an eight-month period in 2011 and developed through improvisation with mostly non-professional actors.

A film crew disappears in Sharjah while scouting locations for a film based on Ghassan Kanafani’s 1963 novel, Men in the Sun.

Scratches on Paper (2011–14) demonstrates this technique to render sound and light in a deeply subjective way – a personal chronicle writ in bumps and depressions and left subject to the viewer’s contemplation.

Simone Fattal’s practice has always been informed by war and its historical contexts.

The Spartan scytale is the communication tool that does the most harm to the universality of language.

Over the past few years, Mahmoud Khaled has reassessed the formal and technical concerns of his educational background in academic painting through the lens of a conceptual practice.

Shiraz Bayjoo’s practice elucidates forgotten histories that contain multiple layers of meaning and visual culture. Mainly working with repurposed archival displays, his works subvert oppressive western historical narratives that have defined the psyches of colonised peoples.

Anita Pouchard Serra’s visual storytelling practice draws from her transnational lived experience and engagement with social issues such as migration and women’s rights.

Semiha Berksoy was a leading figure in the history of Turkey’s cultural scene.

Session is a video triptych shot in Sharjah’s urban areas and desert.

Shadow Sites I and its ‘sister’ Shadow Sites II are both films that adopt the vantage point of aerial reconnaissance missions while taking an altogether different viewpoint of the ground surveyed.

Shadow Sites II and its ‘sister’ Shadow Sites I are both films that adopt the vantage point of aerial reconnaissance missions while taking an altogether different viewpoint of the ground surveyed.

Artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson explores relationships between people, technology, surveillance, identity and media and the role these relationships play in the struggle against censorship.

Rasheed Araeen presents Shamiyaana–Food for Thought: Thought for Change (2016–17), a new project partly supported by Sharjah Art Foundation at documenta 14 in Athens.

‘Long live the independence of water’ is a two-day workshop that considers the relationship between water and belief.

The Sharjah InfoCart is a mobile kiosk that traveled to malls and outdoor public places in Sharjah including Al Qasba, Sahara Centre Mall, Rolla, and Al-Jubail bus station, during January and February 2011.

The areesh, a traditional Emirati palm shelter used as housing until the 1950s, functions in Shelter for a New Youth to provide protection from the sun.

I invite the Biennial audience onto an abra, a traditional boat that travels across Sharjah Creek.

Sammy Baloji’s photographic and sculptural assemblages braid together the pre- and post-colonial histories of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by examining the industrial and cultural heritage of the Katanga region.

Shiraz Bayjoo’s practice explores the social, political and historical conditions integral to Mauritian cultural identity and the wider Indian Ocean region.

Shirin revolves around a stage production of the twelfth century Persian tale of Khosrow and Shirin.

Rania Attieh is from Tripoli, Lebanon. She is an MFA graduate in Media Art Production as a writer/director of fiction from the City College of New York.

The installation Silence Spins is an infinite aural tearoom, seemingly without walls. This is accomplished by building walls that do not reflect sound – or at least, do so at a barely perceptible level.

Humans can never be alike,
Nor can trees .
A man and a tree in this being form An entity with a unique quality!

Using a variety of media, including installation, sculpture, print and video, Simon Denny examines the social and political implications of the technology industry and the rise of social media, start-up culture, blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

Shot in downtown Detroit, Sirens of Chrome follows four women in a car as they drive through deserted city streets.

The head of the Centre of Gulf Studies advised that questions regarding 'Mascalat' have been raised previously, but unfortunately no information or resources have been compiled or published regarding this topic aside from what you have mentioned.

Both his etchings and charcoal drawings are carvings of light from within darkness, representations of silence.

Doug Ashford is a New York based artist, teacher and writer whose work considers exhibition, display and other social production as formal models for speculation and reconsideration.

Vivan Sundaram works with contextual responsibility and radical contradiction, exploring shifts of medium, different ‘languages’, historical acuity and memory archives.

Sky Blue Flag (2015) is an installation by Byron Kim placed along the Corniche of Sharjah, a site where people of many nations congregate for commerce.

The title comes from the Emirate’s distinctive welcome sign, spelled out in flowers in the middle of a roundabout notorious for its rush-hour traffic jams.

Snapshot is a collective reconstruction of news stories in the United Arab Emirates over the last four decades.

Soffreh, the title of Gita Meh’s installation and performance piece for Sharjah Biennial 9, is a Farsi word meaning ‘tablecloth.’

A large cube of white confetti stood in the centre of one of the gallery spaces in Sharjah Art Museum.

A complex, winding installation of plumbing pipes took over one of the museum’s rooms.

A library of 100 books written anonymously or under pseudonyms. Over the years and throughout the world, authors have written under pseudonyms or anonymously.

Souls’ Landscapes is a three-part performance conceived and performed by Uriel Barthélémi in collaboration with Entissar Al Hamdany, Joel Lokossou, Rigo 23 and Fabrice Taraud.

sound cells : FRIDAYS, the second installation in Magdi Mostafa’s '(sound cells)' series, is an abstract evocation of the artist’s Cairo neighbourhood, Ardellawa, as heard on Fridays – a day of prayer, but also a day of household chores and cleaning.

Mohammed Kazem employs the same technique to scratch a series of shapes on paper that refer to the angles created when opening doors

A trained chef, Mirna Bamieh melds food and storytelling to develop socially engaged work through Palestine Hosting Society, a live art project she founded in 2018.

Joiri Minaya is a Dominican- American multidisciplinary artist whose work investigates the continuity of colonial power hierarchies, often exploring the performativity of tropical identity and its commodification.

At the intersection of conceptual, staged and documentary image- making, Hoda Afshar’s lens- based artistic practice explores the representation of gender, marginality and displacement.

Since 1995, Allora & Calzadilla have produced work in sculpture, video, sound and performance, often in various combinations, to create sensual and immersive works of compound meaning.

Spells on Our Youth was a site-specific project made on location for the 9th Sharjah Biennial.

Trained as a painter and printmaker, Rohini Devasher also works in sound, video and site-specific drawings.

Illumination Rig starts with a basic premise, turning money into light; it is in this sense an event, an occasion where consumption and transformation are made conspicuous.

Spiteful of Dream is a video installation that explores the relationships between the manufacture and mechanics of mass movement (airplanes, trains) and the physical upheaval experienced by those who have been forced to leave their native country.

Laurent Grasso’s film Spy Falcon was inspired by the Artist’s visit to Sharjah, where he heard mythological and romantic stories of traditional Arabic hunters.

Stan Douglas’ conceptual approach to photography, film and television draws attention to their respective aesthetic conventions and modes of production as well as their cultures and histories. In his film work, time is a recurrent concern.

This installation of Steel Rings represents the first sixty five kilometres of the TAPLine from its origin in Saudi Arabia.

Confident steps of youth, armed with knowledge and will, filled with determination and life, on a road fraught with difficulties, confusion and fear.

It is Benjamin who suggests that in order to truly know a society one has to look at the less privileged environs of its interstices, at the objects that are left behind as a result of human activity, at its waste and at the order that they represent or parody to some extent.

Considered to be among the most accomplished Arab painters and printmakers, Dalloul’s works merge contemporary disciplines with traditional materials such as ink, sepia and handmade paper.

The documentaries of Taysir Batniji differ from sensationalised standard documentaries.

Studio Pietà (King Kong Komplex) tells the story of Simon Fujiwara’s attempt to restage and photograph a lost picture of his mother held in the arms of a Lebanese boyfriend.

The work of Taro Shinoda often explores humans’ relationship to nature, science and engineering. Formally trained in traditional Japanese gardening from a young age.

Two hundred and thirty five individual drawings depicting the pages of George Orwell’s novel 1984.

Berni Searle’s body is often at the centre of her work, rendered as a site of inquiry into prescribed notions of racial, gender and ethnographic identity.

Byron Kim has long distilled his approach to life and art in a conceptual practice marked by studies of colour and abstraction.

Sunny Lane is Sonnenallee in German, a famous street in the south west of Berlin, home to a large number of Arab immigrants.

Hannah Black and Ebba Fransén Waldhör have previously collaborated, along with musician Bonaventure, on multiple iterations of their performance work Anxietina (2018).

Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens’ practice is infused with a long-standing desire to make language visible.

The work of electronic artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer focuses on surveillance, deception and perception in contemporary society.

Nikolaus Gansterer’s expansive practice of mapping, performative visualisation and cartographic representations explores the accumulation of interrelated and often ephemeral phenomena and processes that constitute the specific atmosphere of a place.

Concerned with notions of dislocation and belonging, Veronica Ryan’s sculptures evoke shapes, forms and objects associated
with her heritage.

T. Shanaathanan’s practice grapples with realities of displacement and a familial desire to piece together experiences born out of violent fragmentation, particularly through an examination of Sri Lanka’s civil war (1978–2009).

The works employ a Huichol yarn-painting technique, in which coloured wool is applied to wood panels covered with Campeche wax, to create compositions influenced by abstract painting, architecture and design.

Léuli Eshrāghi is drawn to the embodied teachings that Indigenous histories call into becoming as realisations of ancestral, Earth-centred ways of being and knowing.

'In the eyes of the Islamist terrorists I belonged to the hateful category of the tagh’out' – a traitor to the cause of God.

Portraits of the artists shot in studios in Beirut, Damascus, Cairo and Sharjah.

Talking Wall (2015) continues Damián Ortega’s long engagement with architecture, informal construction and systems of communication

Tamara Al Samerraei’s paintings are based on photographs from both her personal archive and the public domain.

Performance with gravel, rocks, epiphytes and inkjet prints on limestone.

Using the flag as a recurrent motif throughout her work, Sara Rahbar explores ideas of nationalism, ideology and belonging.

Terra Incognita, et cetera is an exercise in collective painting and a spin on territorial marking.

The Afghan Collection reflects on links between artefacts, their use value in nomadic families, the opportunistic dealer network, the market, and the classic mode of museography that eclipses these very relations.

Moza Almatrooshi’s research investigates how territorial knowledge has been shaped across time, spanning agricultural practices, imperial impositions and postcolonial realities.

Often drawn from constructed scenarios and performances with ordinary people, Meiro Koizumi’s works consider the dividing lines between public and private and probe public and private awareness of innate and socially conditioned behaviours.

Questioning orientalist discourse, Lavanya Mani recontextualises the fantastical myths and fables
disseminated by Victorian travellers and the histories of traditional textile production.

The Bank is an urban currency converter of such personal memories and stories, bringing great profit to Bank Street.

Alaa Edris investigates changing urban environments, folklore and symbols of gender and belief to reformulate and create new perspectives on architecture, myth and social history.

The Book of Profanation, exhibited here for the first time as an experimental prototype, is a compendium of recent projects by Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency (DAAR).

The Box is an installation that combines video, a pneumatic system and custom-made software to give the impression that the Artists are trapped inside a monitor and trying to escape.

Roméo Mivekannin’s reinterpretations of classical European art challenge western canonical representations of Blackness. The artist presents a series of canvases bridging unusual painting techniques and archival photographic images.

Filled with thousands of commands each second, our brains can no longer be surprised.

Reflecting on the concept of civic belonging, Bouchra Khalili examines the struggle of communities excluded from citizen memberships immigrants for equal rights and the
ways in which it continues to resonate in present times.

The Committee is an attempt to explore the dynamics of this desperation and the different elements that shape it.

In the photographs, you see the caretaker watching the faded screen as I project my drawings upon it, transforming the space and bringing the cinema back to life.

This garden is situated in one of the old courtyards of the heritage area in Sharjah.

I have been going on bike rides since 1992 - in the Emirates as well as in other places such as Japan, France, Scotland ... On these trips I make sketches of natural scenes and document them in my journals.

Not long ago, text and image, the conceptual and the formal, were not two separate and irreconcilable entities: in Byzantine icons, emblem books and allegories, text and image work as one, and are treated as one.

In The Dislocation of Degree Zero, Raqs Media Collective transforms found aerial footage of desert landscapes in the United Arab Emirates into a moving inscription.

This powerful play explores the complex emotional realities of two immigrants with very different histories and aspirations who are forced together in a shared state of exile.

Coco Fusco’s practice engages with themes of power, race and the sociopolitical ramifications of Cuban exile.

UVA (United Visual Artists) is a London-based collective founded in 2003 by British artist Matt Clark (b.1974).

The Evolution of the Angel in Line with the State of Exception, features a series of photos that act as portraits of angels.

Au Sow Yee explores fictional, mysterious narratives embedded within musical and archival sources and responds to the influence of Cold War structures in history- making processes in Southeast Asia.

Documentary photographer Solmaz Daryani captures social, political and ecological issues relating to Iran and the surrounding region.

Josephine Meckseper evokes an apocalyptic retail environment within this installation

The Fourth Stage (2015) weaves a complex and unlikely union of illusion and myth between three worlds of which he is concurrently a part.

This project involves the construction of a symbolic garden using objects found in storage at Sharjah’s Department of Culture and Information.

The Goodness Regime is a creative documentary exploring the image of Norway as a country of peace and benevolence.