Sharjah Biennial 9: Provisions for the Future
and Past of the Coming Days

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

Simryn Gill’s projects have often focused on the presentation and transformation of found objects to examine relationships between culture, knowledge and place.

A Monument for the Living is a human-scale replica of the notorious Burj al Murr, a derelict concrete high-rise that towers over downtown Beirut.

Decoder can be read as an inverted monument to the preferred mythology of a consumer-driven model of market capitalism.

A Small Town at the Turn of the Century is a series of 39 type C photographs that were taken by Simryn Gill in Port Dickson in Malaysia, the town where she grew up.

The following is a text in progress, dating back to 1985 and now published in its eighth state; it is the Ars Pictorica of the Airmail Paintings:

Palestinian-American Tarek Halaby’s performance for the Biennial is an unfinished project, an ongoing product or situation that echoes the unresolved Palestinian situation.

Walid Raad discusses his 15-year project The Atlas Group, and Adila Laidi-Hanieh discusses the issues of culture and Arab modernities.

Alongside works entitled Entropy and Dark Matter, David Spriggs presented the large site-specific installation Axis of Power at Sharjah Biennial 9.

First shown in Sharjah Biennial 7 and now part of the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection, Beirut Caoutchouc is one of Rechmaoui’s best known works.

Malullah works with installation, photography and video often investigating the new roles being adopted by contemporary Islamic woman.

Rimini Protokoll are recognised as being among the leaders and creators of the theatre movement known as 'Reality Trend' (Theater der Zeit), which has exerted a powerful influence on the alternative theatre scene.

In her performance, Death is Certain, Eva Meyer-Keller uses sweet cherries as her protagonists.

In Domestic Tourism II, Maha Maamoun explores how the ‘timeless’ image of the Egyptian pyramids - projected by the tourism industry.

This dichotomy or battle of the opposites encompasses the human condition as a whole and exposes our universal values together with our detestable errors.

On my first visit to Sharjah, I came with very little knowledge about the cultural and physical nature of life in this part of the world.

Dubai is a city of superlatives that includes the largest, the highest, and the most expensive.

Faces reflects Beirut in which people are constantly observed by images of the dead.

For this work, Maider López marked out a football field with painted lines across the middle of the main public square of the Sharjah Art Area.

Liliana Porter’s Forced Labor (Red Sand) follows a series of the Artist’s installations that display miniature figurines undertaking everyday yet seemingly insurmountable tasks.

Maider Lopez installed a drinking fountain in the main square of Sharjah Art Area, which the Artist saw as a useful addition for the people who live there.

Liliana Porter’s film Fox in the Mirror captures a bizarre and fantastical concert that features a number of familiar figurines that appear repeatedly in her work.

FUGERE (A Series of Olympiadic Moments) is an exploration into the strangeness of the realm of professional sport.

Karin Sander’s German National Women's Soccer Team 1:7,7 is a scaled-down exact replica of each member of the 2005 German national women’s soccer team.

God Grows on Trees seeks to speak at once about religion, fear, hope, humanity, love and commoditisation.

The film depicts an epic journey in which the pair strives to break a Guinness World Record, by pushing a wheelbarrow from Ljubljana to Sharjah.

Firoz Mahmud's Halcyon Tarp is a mixed media work on a grand scale that featured a traditional Bangladeshi pavilion.

The newly designed Happy 4 Ever tissue boxes and Best Construction fences can be seen in and around Sharjah over the course of the Biennial.

With Have a Pleasant Stay! I wanted to create a space for reflection and empathy, a visual and physical metaphor of the concept of suffocation and claustrophobia.

This series advances an idea of painting as an interactive medium able to channel google searches, social networks and spiritual phenomena.

Having been born in Shufhat camp and having lived there for over 30 years I have witnessed its transformation since childhood.

The Artist documents the ‘new work’ of local farmers who have been forced to comb through suburban domestic refuse everyday in exchange for meager compensation to supplement their falling agricultural income.

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

Written in Arabic script this work playfully references the notion of ‘in shallah’ in Arabic culture.

Men take off their shoes before entering into a large room to sit close to each other in a circle. Women do the same on the other side of a curtain that separates them from the men.

Melissa Chimera created a series of oil paintings of white flowers, displayed in tandem with Ne Jame’s poems which evoke humanity’s connection to the seen and unseen world.

KA (JCB, JCB) is a powerful and evocative sculpture that brings together two backhoe arms into a form that resembles human arms raised in invocation.

Katchokwe Style poigantly recalls African and intenational events that have shaped African society.

Kugelbahn is a site specific work developed in response to the distinctive ramps of the Sharjah Art Museum.

One of Japan’s most innovative contemporary designers and restaurateur, Shinichiro Ogata’s lecture explores the connections between design and sweet making.

Liliana Porter’s Man Drawing follows a series of installations by the Artist that depict miniature figurines undertaking hugely disproportionate tasks.

Agnes Janich created a multi-video installation where viewers were led through a maze of darkened passages to the prison-like cages of barking dogs.

While seldom site-specific, Weiner’s text pieces physically correspond to the locations in which they are exhibited.

Nations, N S Harsha’s work for Sharjah Biennial 9, is an expansive installation consisting of hand-painted flags, sewing machines and textiles.

I work on the concept of time mainly by dissecting and analyzing time in relation to movement and the pace at which time moves.

On red nails, palm trees and other icons is a personal archive of images that came together over the course of a year and a half.

This production further develops the performance style that has characterised recent Temple Independent Company productions – a combination of theatre, music and visual arts.

In making this work the Artist creates a sculpture that reflects the exhibition and its display, literally and conceptually.

Epaminonda works with video and film, collage, photography, books and objects in an extensive process of assembling and disassembling to reconstruct non-linear narratives and situations.

The idea for my project emerged when I saw the portrait of Sheikh Sultan, hanging at the entrance to the Sharjah Museum.

Using found images and footage, Iman Issa’s proposal took the form of a video in which a female subject answers questions concerning her feelings and perceptions of the war and the landscape of Iraq.

The two films capture the village during different seasons, highlighting the strange absence of people from the landscape during both summer and winter.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Hiroyuki Masuyama recreated a series of lost paintings by 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich.

The Majlis is a series of photographs documenting different sitting areas regionally.

The Scream which has won the Prize for 'The significant advancement in the art of Choreography for 2008' by the French Critics Syndicate.

Translated from Arabic, the phrase reads ‘The wider the vision, the narrower the statement’ and is by the Sufi writer Al Naffari.

What's important is the talk taking place after the work; the talk that describes the art-work to be an accomplished event.

Videos of the 'living martyr' have become a staple in global media and a powerful visual presence throughout the West Bank and Gaza.

Un-drum is a complex interaction between music composition, body movement, performance and computer and electronic engineering.

VHS Kahloucha is Néjib Belkadhi’s first feature documentary film and a warm tribute to the singularity of amateur Tunisian filmmaker Monceh Kahloucha.

Maider López’s installation Walls was created in direct response to the internal architecture of Sharjah Art Museum.

Ana Vidigal exhibited a series of ten collages, each of which were made using large-scale copies of labyrinth or maze puzzles found in newspapers and magazines.

The work comprises three small wall-hung pieces that form a poignant chain of references.

A project on the creek in Sharjah, from where a large number of dhows leave for 'Somalia'.

A new music score will be presented live on stage for the 70s experimental Egyptian film ZAWGATI WAL KALB directed by Said Marzoiq 1971.

Epaminonda works with video and film, collage, photography, books and objects in an extensive process of assembling and disassembling to reconstruct non-linear narratives and situations.