Sharjah Biennial’s ‘to carry’ explores constancy and change in 16th edition
- 08 Feb 2025
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
Sharjah Biennial 16 (SB16) with the theme ‘to carry’ has been launched (Feb. 6 — June 15). It unveils more than 650 works by nearly 200 participants, including over 200 new commissions. Curated by Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Ginwala and Zeynep Öz, SB16’s subject explores the ever-expanding questions of what to carry and how to carry it. It is an invitation to view the different perspectives of the curators, as well as understand their interactions with the artists. The works in the Biennial are presented alongside activations, performances and music and film in more than 17 venues across the emirate of Sharjah, including sites in Sharjah City, Al Hamriyah, Al Dhaid and Kalba.
SB16 looks at how we navigate within spaces that are not our own and how we respond to these spaces through the cultures we carry. The title ‘to carry’ connects stories and traditions across generations and cultures, asking what we bring with us when we travel, flee, survive or stay. The Biennial is thus a space for collective way finding, helping audiences make sense of the world by reflecting inwards and across, in times of transition. Alia Swastika focuses on the interplay of power, poetics, politics and the foundational role of women’s knowledge, as well as speculative futures through technological intervention.
Amal Khalaf proposes storytelling, song and divination as rituals for collective learning and resistance in times of political and environmental crisis. Working from an indigenous standpoint, Megan Tamati-Quennell brings together poetic projects exploring concepts related to land, impermanence and conjectural futures as well as reciprocity and respect. Natasha Ginwala centres littoral sites in the Indian Ocean and water wells in Sharjah as reservoirs that carry ancestral memory and place-making, echoing with sonic remembrance. Finally, Zeynep Öz turns a historical lens on societal and economic systems, specifically those developed in response to accelerated changes in technology and science.
Among the themes addressed by the curators are oceanic crossings, regional affinities and cultural continuities - many considered in the context of Sharjah’s coastal geographies and maritime history. Mariam M. Alnoaimi’s work, for example, thinks of the Gulf region’s relationships with water bodies as living entities and re-performs local observances in sites affected by land reclamation. Approaching the littoral as a source of visual stories, Akinbode Akinbiyi’s photograph series Sea Never Dry (1982–ongoing) is spread along the corniche of Sharjah City in the form of urban interventions. The garments, objects and public gestures created by Serapis Maritime, a hybrid art, design and fashion entity, use materials and imagery from Sharjah’s shipyards and industrial facilities.
Megan Cope’s sculpture Kinyingarra Guwinyanba (2024), meaning “place of oyster rocks”, is situated in Buhais Geological Park - a reference to deep geological time and the shallow sea that covered Sharjah millions of years ago. Alia Farid shares two works based on her multi-year research on ancient wetland communities in the southern marshlands of Iraq, which have been impacted by the aftermath of war and oil industry. Septina Layan, to move on, performs the lament during opening week at Kalba Ice Factory and knowledge, mythologies and political narratives carried by women artists, manifest through different expressions in the Biennial. Building on her research on Syrian-Egyptian singer Asmahan who died in a mysterious accident in 1994, Helene Kazan attempts to reclaim feminist histories through song and poetic testimony.
Rajni Perera’s works feature femme hybrids and protagonists inspired by South Asian mythology and speculative cosmologies. Womanifesto presents a quilted shelter-like structure produced by women’s communities around the world, including one in Sharjah’s Al Madam, to offer a transnational space for them to share their stories and build platforms for solidarity. Pratchaya Phinthong experiments with solar energy to enhance coral growth in the reefs around Sharjah. Installed in a courtyard in Al Mureijah Square, Joe Namy’s sonic installation, Dub Plants (2024–2025), probes the historically connected fields of radio culture and agriculture. Under the name The Weaving Project, Güneş Terkol, Salima Hakim and Yim Yen Sum, travelled together into villages in eastern Indonesia’s mountains to trace the ancient history of humanity and the tradition of weaving; their residency resulted in three distinctive new works.
Raven Chacon collaborated with Bedouin singers for his site-responsive sound work in a deserted neighbourhood in Al Madam, originally constructed as public housing for a local tribe. Ayşe İdil İdil, Betül Aksu and Okyanus Çağrı Çamcı, with curator Merve Elveren, present their project Day to Day in two ways — as publication and as an exhibition. Concrete Thread Repertoire, a project group composed of artists, researchers and communities based in Indonesia, assembles an archive of political action and resistance in various states of emergency. Different sonic experiences form core moments in the Biennial. Michael Parekōwhai’s He Kōrero Pūrākau mo Te Awanui o Te Motu: Story of a New Zealand river (2011), a carved and playable Steinway concert grand piano, invites different music communities to perform.
Other Biennial projects include a work by Aotearoa New Zealand musician and sound artist Mara TK and The Ancestral Well: Pulse to Terrain, an album conceived by Natasha Ginwala and Sarathy Kowar. Zeynep Öz’s YAZ Publications is a series of 13 books created in parallel with her Biennial exhibition; it goes to Al Dhaid, where six sound artists respond to the presence or lack of trees, water and irrigation systems, in a former date orchard.