Highlights
Sharjah Biennial 10: Plot for a Biennial presents major new work across disciplines of Visual Arts, Film, Music, Performance and Publications over the course of the Biennial’s eight-week run. The 10th edition of the Sharjah Biennial is curated by Suzanne Cotter and Rasha Salti, in association with Haig Aivazian, and is organized by the Sharjah Art Foundation.
For a complete artist list and more information on the Sharjah Art Foundation and events and commissions of the 2011 Sharjah Biennial, please visit www.sharjahart.org.
MEDIA CONTACTS
FITZ & CO, New York
Justin Conner / Concetta Duncan
Tel: +1-212-627-1455, x232
E: justin@fitzandco.com / concetta@fitzandco.com
Sharjah Art Foundation
Alyazeyah Al-Reyaysa
Tel: +971 6 568 5050
E: alyazeyah@sharjahart.org
Exhibition
Atfal Ahdath
Take me to this place: I want to do the memories
Beirut-based artist collective Atfal Ahdath presents a large-scale comment on the use of photographic manipulation to convey fantasy and aspiration. The collective will explore the role of images and the photographic studio in perpetuating society’s fascination with fame. Their dioramic installation, consisting of video projection, digital image sequence and photomontage, features portraits of its members taken in popular photographic studios in Beirut, Damascus, and Cairo. In its gently parody of the studio portrait, Take me to this place: I want to do the memories offers a reflection on the evolution of the studio tradition in the digital age. Atfal Ahdath is artist Vartan Avakian, visual artist and designer Hatem Imam, and artist Raed Yassin.
Alexis Bhagat and Lize Mogel
Sharjah CityMap and InfoCart
On invitation from the Sharjah Biennial, collaborators Alexis Bhagat and Lize Mogel have teamed up with the residents of Sharjah to produce an alternative city map featuring locations and content directed by the lived experiences, personal memories and preferences of the city’s residents in place of the more typical tourist map. Having roamed the city’s streets with the InfoCart, their custom-designed mobile kiosk, Bhagat and Mogel travelled with their multilingual team to key locations throughout Sharjah to collect stories, mark 'points of interest' from the city’s residents and workers. A unique and intimate production of a 'countercartography,' the Sharjah CityMap will be published in six languages (Arabic, English, Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam, Tagalog), and will be distributed to Sharjah Biennial 10 visitors for free from the InfoCart parked at the entrance of Bait Al Shamsi, Sharjah Arts Area.
Mariam Ghani
The Trespassers
New York artist Mariam Ghani’s new video projection, The Trespassers, calls upon AfghanAmericans who have worked as translators for the US military in Afghanistan. The newly commissioned film presents a riveting exploration of the trade of translation against the act of bearing witness.
Amar Kanwar
The Torn First Pages
Amar Kanwar presents The Torn First Pages, a 19-channel video installation in three parts. This will be the first time the acclaimed New Delhi-based artist’s work has been seen in the UAE. The work is inspired by and dedicated to the Burmese bookshop owner Ko Than Htay, who was imprisoned for tearing out the first page of all books and journals he sold that contained ideological slogans from the Burmese military regime. The Torn First Pages is also an ode to the thousands who are engaged in the struggle for democracy in Burma. Kanwar’s elegant narrative presents a series of parallel and overlapping chapters made from archival footage and scenes shot by the artist. The films engage, elliptically and metaphorically, with ideas of resistance and the struggle for a democratic society, contemporary forms of non-violence, political exile, memory and dislocation. According to the artist: 'The films are varied interventions; I wanted to reexamine the question of evidence, the process of collecting evidence, archiving and presentation, its validity and aesthetics with reference to crime and political resistance. I also wanted to intervene in the realm of the image that supposedly belongs to 'news'— the image that is valuable, is continuously repeated and forgotten. …'
Emily Jacir
Lydda Airport
Inspired by the history and mystique of Lydda Airport (at once the largest in the world and now known as Ben Gurion International), Emily Jacir presents visitors with a two-part installation of film and replica. Jacir’s work, titled Lydda Airport, invites viewers to experience a short film set at the eponymous location sometime in the mid to late 1930s when the British-made structure remained the world’s largest aerodrome and served as an important stop along the 'Empire
Route' of Imperial Airways. Central to the film’s narrative is Hannibal, one of eight planes that made up the Handley Page fleet, the largest passenger planes in the world at the time, which later disappeared somewhere over the Gulf of Oman en route to Sharjah in 1940. Exemplifying the artist’s known passion for finding inspiration in repressed historical narratives, the film also draws upon the story of Edmond Tamari, a transport company employee from Jaffa, who received communication that he should take a bouquet of flowers to Lydda Airport and wait for the arrival of Amelia Earhart to welcome her to Palestine. She never arrived.
After viewing and proceeding past Jacir’s film, Sharjah Biennial 10 visitors will find themselves presented with the artist’s replica of the formerly Lydda Airport.
This work is commissioned by the Pick Laudati Fund for Arts Computing, Northwestern.
Imran Qureshi
Moderate Enlightenment and Blessing Upon the Land of My Love
Lahore-based Imran Qureshi is regarded as one of the leading figures in the practice of the 'Contemporary Miniature' aesthetic. For Sharjah Biennial 10, Qureshi presents a stunning new site-specific commission and sixteen paintings from his ongoing series Moderate Enlightenment (2005 - 2010). , Qureshi’s Moderate Enlightenment features contemporary figures piously dressed, yet preoccupied in acts of recreation. Created in response to the marginalization of religious people that followed the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Qureshi challenges viewers’ perception of humanity and religion.
Blessings Upon the Land of my Love, the artist’s powerful site-specific painting in the courtyard of Beit Serkal, draws upon personal memories of a suicide bomb attack near the artist’s own home, and the history of U.S. involvement in Pakistan in the Russian-Afghan war.
Abdullah Al Saadi
Camar Cande’s Journey
For his new work commissioned for Sharjah Biennial 10, Emirati artist Abdullah Al Saadi embarked on a month-long journey on foot through the northern region of the United Arab Emirates and Oman, from the mountains to the coast. Accompanied by a donkey named Camar Cande and a dog, the artist walked through the mountainous terrain documenting his journey with over one hundred watercolours paintings and video. Magical in its apparent simplicity, the work reveals a meditation on time and the changing nature of our relationship to the landscape.
Slavs and Tatars
Friendship of Nations
The Polish/Belgian/Iranian collective of Slavs and Tatars present their epic project Friendship of Nations. From 17th century Sarmatism (the dominant ideology amongst the Polish nobility) to monobrows in America and the Green movement in present-day Iran, Friendship of Nations traces an ambitious if unlikely genealogy between Iran and Poland. Looking at two key modern moments: the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and Poland’s Solidarność in the 1980s, Slavs and Tatars use these events as bookends to the two major geopolitical narratives of the recent past: the communist project of the 20th century and Islamic modernism in the 21st. Their multidimensional project takes the form of an installation of banners, posters and sculptural objects presented in one of the coral courtyard houses of Sharjah’s Heritage Area. In addition, they will present a lecture reading, publication and the release of thousands of the monobrow balloons on the opening days of the Biennial.
Ammar Bouras
Tagh’out
Algerian artist Ammar Bouras returns to archives and recollections of the Algerian civil war of the 1990s in this new multi-channel, multi-media installation Tagh’out. The work captures the artist’s experiences and memories of living in a state between the rule of law on the one hand, and to 'loyalty' to Islam on the other. His aspirations for a free, democratic and modern Algeria torn in between. Commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation, the work is realized as a largescale installation comprised of two panoramic light boxes that flank the walls leading to a projected 48-channel documentary video. Layering images of assassinated Algerian President Boudiaf with collaged portraits of thousands of Algerians who were victims of the civil strife, Bouras presents a poignant reflection of the Algerian people’s lived experience of war as well as the artist’s own witnessing of the historic assassination.
Joana Hadijithomas & Khalil Joreige
Lebanese Rocket Society: Elements for a Monument
Lebanese film and visual artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige propose a captivating exploration of modernity in Lebanon and the region through a reconstitution of the story of the Lebanese Rocket Society. Initially established as the Haigazian Rocket Society in the early 1960s with the aim of “conceiving and launching rockets for the exploration and study of space,'the humble organization of scientists and engineers grew to national importance in the late 1950s and early 1960s as creators of Lebanon’s first series of highly developed rockets. Later supervised and financed by the Lebanese Army, the then renamed Lebanese Rocket Society produced a series of soil-fuelled rockets coined 'Cedar' between 1960 and 1967. The Lebanese Rocket Society’s rocket launches became full-scale national celebrations, and for the 21st anniversary of Lebanon’s Independence, a series of stamps were produced featuring images of the Cedar IV rocket. For the Sharjah Biennial, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige have reproduced a model of the Cedar IV. Nearly eight meters high, the rocket will induce a temporal rupture and sense of ambiguity with regards to what it is, appear as both a rocket in form and, in the collective unconscious, a missile.
Judith Barry
Cairo Stories…
Acclaimed New York-based artist Judith Barry presents her new, multi-channel video work Cairo stories… across multiple sites in Sharjah’s Arts and Heritage Areas. The work continues an on-going series of recorded ‘as-told-to’ stories, based on personal interviews under the title of Not reconciled that premiered at the Whitney Biennial in 1987. The impetus for the series was Barry’s reflection on notions of ‘history’ as it is lived and recounted through the personal lives of others. Initiated in 2003 at the beginning of the Iraq War, Cairo stories… explores the many different ways Cairene women negotiate the ideological, cultural and economic conditions that are specific to Cairo. Drawing on a hundreds of hours of recorded interviews, Barry filmed actors recounting extracts of individual narratives. The resultant films are presented as images and voices that emerge on a route from the Sharjah Art Museum, through the Souks of old Sharjah to its Heritage area.
Co-commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation, Foundation Daniel Langlois, Montreal and American University, Cairo.
Rayanne Tabet
Home on Neutral Ground
Concerned with researching hidden histories that are transformed and retold through objects and installations Lebanese artist Rayyane Tabet presents a 3-part installation in the renowned Sharjah Cricket Stadium as a commission of the Sharjah Art Foundation.
On the evening of March 18, the artist will present an aerial photograph of a vacant plot of land in Afghanistan printed to scale on the Stadium’s pitch projector for public viewing. A second aspect of the multi-day project will feature one day of uninterrupted footage of a gallery space with a floor drawing of a cricket pitch. A third component of Tabet’s Home on Neutral Ground (2011) will feature one square-foot of white paint silk screened on 740 portfolios to be distributed during the Biennial, each containing a drawing made on Sharjah Cricket Stadium stationary.
Film
Karim Aïnouz
Sonnenallee
Brazilian-Algerian filmmaker and visual artist Karim Aïnouz presents a 14-minute film inspired from a story of border crossing and exile. The Sharjah Art Foundation commission, Sonnenallee, draws its title from a famous street south of Berlin, home to a large number of Arab immigrants. During the time of the Berlin Wall, a young man was shot while trying to cross to West Berlin near a checkpoint on Sonnenallee. He was the last fugitive to be shot dead before the fall of the Wall. Aïnouz’s film presents an imaginary sun-drenched place, a road filled with snow and a horizon exploding with blinding light, like a technicolor utopia.
Sean Gullette
TRAITORS
Tangier-based American writer, actor, and filmmaker Sean Gullette brings scenes of Morocco to Sharjah with his new film TRAITORS. Commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation, the film casts Malika, a conservatively dressed student and call center worker by day, and leader of an all-girl punk band by night. On the night she plans to shoot her music video, she falls on a secret that haunts and propels her on a series of adventures in the streets of the white city.
Bahman Kiarostami
Javad
Iranian documentary filmmaker Bahman Kiarostami pays tribute to Javad Yassari, a cabaret crooner whose rise to fame was brought to an abrupt halt by the 1979 revolution. Kiarostami’s reconstitution of the destiny of a man who sings about the loss of love and loneliness is a tender journey into a very old and overlooked part of Iranian culture: that of its hard working, hard drinking, tough, rough and devout downtown men and women.
Music
A Score for a Biennial
A Score for a Biennial is a series of musical performances taking place throughout the course of the Biennial's opening week. The program unfolds around complex collaborations where artists and musicians will engage in unique and in depth dialogues in Sharjah across griot traditions, free jazz, alt rock, Gnawa devotional music and layered samplings of field recordings.
Maalem Abdelkébir Merchane and Yusef Lateef will form a duo, Maale Abdelkébir Merchane is regarded as one of the purest voices in Gnawa, the spiritual music of the descendants of black African slaves in Morocco known for its healing powers and incessant percussive trance. Yusef Lateef is a legendary and versatile Grammy award-winning reed virtuoso and innovator in the African American tradition of autophysiopsychic music.
Sam Shalabi and Alan Bishop will perform on the second night, experimenting with highly textured and atmospheric lengthy sound-scapes derived from research conducted in musical traditions from various corners of the globe. The duo will also utilize field recordings in the UAE, and the result will be layered with their own live instrumental improvisations.
The program will conclude with Dimi Mint Abba and Amino Belyamani, Dimi Mint Abba is perhaps Mauritania’s most iconic and powerful renditioner: a griot with an incomparable, emotionally charged and passionate voice. Amino Belyamani is an acclaimed New York pianist known for his rich and layered musical interests, blending African rhythms, Arabic melodies, classical structures and experimental jazz.
As part of the Music Programme, Noma Omran will perform My Heart Tells Me, a tribute to Omar Amiralay.
Performance
Omar Rajeh
Mushroom and Fig Leaves, 2011
A Sharjah Biennial premiere performed by Maqamat Dance Theatre (Choreographer Omar Rajeh in collaboration with composer Mahmoud Turkmani and Contralto Fadia Tomb El-Hage)
On the occasion of Sharjah Biennial 10, renowned Lebanese choreographer and dancer Omar Rajeh will present a new work performed by Beirut’s Maqamat Dance Theatre. In this new creation, Omar Rajeh takes his views of the human form as 'structure' to a new level in a sophisticated quest to further deconstruct, alienate, re-discover, and question our perception of the human form. The body, separated from the mind, becomes architecture, allowing for an exploration of being and the aesthetics of creation. The new commission, set to a newly written score by renowned guitarist, composer and oud player Mahmoud Turkmani, will be interpreted live with Contralto Fadia Tomb El-Hage, internationally regarded as one of the most beautiful voices in the Arab world. Omar Rajeh is the founder and Artistic Director of the Maqamat Dance Theatre.
Publications
Manual for Treason
Playing on eclectic parallels and contrasts between the literary sense of the word 'plot' and the Biennial’s overarching themes, Manual for Treason will feature a series of editions in which the guest editor has been asked to take on the role of curator, editing and producing the content and design of his or her own version in this one-of-a-kind compilation of texts and images.
Bi-lingual writers, translators, legal scholars, curators, art historians, critics, filmmakers, artists and theorists were invited to guest edit their version of the manual in one or more of the languages they possess in addition to English. Guest editors include: Omar Berrada and Érik Bullot (French and English), Başak Ertür (Turkish and English), Angela Harutyunyan and Aras Özgun (Armenian, Turkish, Arabic and English), Maha Maamoun and Haytham El-Wardany (Arabic and English), Murtaza Vali (Bengali, Urdu and English), and Ashkan Sepahvand (Farsi and English).
Cabinet Magazine
A Collector's Album of Traitors, Traders, Translators and Experientialists
For its contribution to Sharjah Biennial 10, Cabinet magazine will present A Collector's Album of Traitors, Traders, Translators and Experientialists. Featuring sixty-four trading cards, the project showcases prominent examples of four characters—the trader, the traitor, the translator, and the experientialist—important to the conceptual framework of Sharjah Biennial 10. Available at various shops in Sharjah, the trading cards—which can be collected in a special album that offers short biographical sketches—include a diverse range of historical figures, among them La Malinche, Hernan Cortes's Nahua guide in his conquest of Mexico; Viktor Sukhodrev, Nikita Khrushchev's favorite interpreter for US-Soviet diplomatic encounters at the height of the Cold War; Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD; and Edna Ruth Byler, one of the founding figures of the Fair Trade movement.