Society
3.14.2019
Zoom on Sharjah 14 edition Biennial
Since the 7th of March 2019 and till the 10 June 2019, Sharjah Art Foundation features over 80 established and emerging artists from around the globe, over 60 major new commissions and many art works in the fourteenth edition of its Biennial (SB14).
Called Leaving the Echo Chamber, the event will explore the possibilities and purpose of producing art when news is fed by a monopoly of sources, history is increasingly fictionalised and when borders and beliefs are dictated by cultural, social and political systems.
In order to do this, different curators have collaboratively conceived the SB14 theme through three distinct exhibitions that bring together new commissions, large-scale public installations and performances. The result: a serie of provocations about how one might renegotiate the shape and function of the ‘echo chamber’ of contemporary life.
In parallel with the opening of SB14, the curators will present the foundation’s March Meeting (MM 2019), an annual gathering of curators and other local and international artists who explore topical issues in contemporary art through a programme of talks and performances.
Leaving the echo chamber
‘Contemporary life is dominated by competing information and fluctuating histories a reality that raises important questions about the trajectory of contemporary art as well as the conditions in which it is made,’ said Hoor Al Qasimi, Director of Sharjah Art Foundation.
Leaving the Echo Chamber will explore subjects ranging from migration and diaspora to concepts of time and interpreted histories, giving artists the possibility to explore stories that echo in a different way and reveal differing means of connecting and sustaining a collective humanity. Questions in which Zoe Butt, Omar Kholeif and Claire Tancons bring different perspectives and represent the complexity of challenges faced by today’s artists and society as a whole.
Journey Beyond the Arrow, curated by Zoe Butt, seeks to illuminate the necessity of exchange and diversity across the globe and throughout human history. In this exhibition, artists reveal the intergenerational impact of a range of physical and psychological ‘tools’, showing how the representations and meanings of these tools have shifted as a consequence of colonial exploitation, social and religious conflict or ideological extremism.
Making New Time, curated by Omar Kholeif, is a provocation on material culture reimagined through the lens of a group of artists whose activism encourage us to extend beyond the limits of belief. “Social media, algorithmic and computational culture have created a sonic noise that echoes throughout the chamber of contemporary culture and the artists in Making New Time explore this culture but also retreat back into a culture of feeling emotion, affect and slowness that seeks to create a space for us to breathe outside of this chamber. “ explains the curator.
The exhibition also considers how economies have formed around technological culture, how narrative is created and deconstructed, and how these forces enable a reconstitution, or indeed a restitution of a history lost. “In Making New Time, I worked through my own obsession with the concept of time and its warped acceleration –chronological time, irregular time, fake time, real time, dream time. This leads us to conversations between consciousness and sleep, the space between man and machine, and the unknown artefacts of history. “
To finish, Look for Me All Around You by Claire Tancons is an open platform of migrant images and fugitive forms. Conceived as a contrapuntal proposal to the realm of hegemonic structures of looking, learning, and feeling, it is an address to the redistribution of the sensible and a call for the repossession of perception.
These exhibitions will feature work by established international artists such as the indian artist Nalini Malani or the Afghan Khadim Ali, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, the Lebanese founder of Arab Image foundation Akram Zaatari, but also emerging one like the Kuwaiti artist Alia Farid who last year received the Art Jameel foundation prize.
About Sharjah Art Foundation
Sharjah Art Foundation is an catalyst and producer of contemporary art within the Emirate of Sharjah, third biggest emirates of the region, in dialogue with the international arts community. Under the leadership of founder Hoor Al Qasimi, a curator and artist, the foundation offers an experimental and wide-ranging programmation that supports the production and presentation of contemporary art, preserves the distinct culture of the region, and encourages a shared understanding of the transformational role of art.
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