Overview
Overview
Today H.H. Dr. Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi inaugurates the 9th edition of the Sharjah Biennial. The Biennial launched on Monday with the March Meeting symposium, a platform for artistic debate, featuring high-profile speakers such as architect Rem Koolhaas, former Guggenheim Director Thomas Krens, as well as a number of prestigious art institutions such as the Townhouse Gallery, the Tashkent Biennial, Birzeit’s University’s Virtual Gallery and Ashkal Alwan for Contemporary Arts. The Biennial’s Film and Production programme, Past of the Coming Days’, curated by Tarek Abou El Fetouh and featuring performances, lectures and film screenings in different venues throughout the city, also kicked off earlier in the week. Some of the highlights included Rimini Protokoll’s interactive performance Call Cutta in a box and Abbas Kiarostami’s film Shirin. Tuesday also saw the launch of the Curator’s Workshop, a week long series of seminars and workshops for emerging contemporary art curators from the Middle East and hosted in collaboration with the International Curators Forum and Tate. For the first time this year, the Biennial also hosted the symbolic Handover Ceremony of the torch of the capital of Arab Culture, from Damascus to Jerusalem.
The Sharjah Biennial, hosted by the Department of Culture and Information, this year takes place from March 16 until May 16 2009. Under the auspices of Biennial Director, HH Sheika Hoor al Qasimi, overseen by renowned Curators Isabel Carlos and Tarek Abou El Fetouh and led by Artistic Director Jack Persekian, the 9th edition of the Sharjah Biennial transcends central themes and pre-cast frameworks, exhibiting instead a wide range of works selected by open invitation. The Sharjah Biennial has since its inauguration in 1993 served to connect artists, institutions and organisations and to foster artistic dialogue and exchange. It ranks amongst the most established and prominent cultural events in the Middle East.
‘The Sharjah Biennial 9, unlike many other Biennials, imposes no geographical classifications on displaying work,’ says Hoor Al Qasimi, Director of the Sharjah Biennial 9. ‘We have also decided not to limit the selection process to a wish-list of participants, but have opted instead to consider work submitted by artists and non-artists alike, who were brave enough to take up the challenge and respond to an open invitation to realise their ideas.’
The SB9 program comprises the exhibition programme titled ‘Provisions For The Future’ curated by Isabel Carlos, and the performance and film programme ‘Past Of The Coming Days’ curated by Tarek Abou El Fetouh. The entire city of Sharjah will be offered to artists for context-specific work, and other SB9 activities will take place across a wide range of venues including the Sharjah Art Museum, the Heritage Area of Sharjah, and the Sharjah Museum for Contemporary Arab Art.
‘Sharjah is a geographic and cultural meeting place, where the notion of future is permanently evoked,’ comments Isabel Carlos, Curator of the Sharjah Biennial 9. ‘More than a presentation of a global selection of art works, ‘Provisions For The Future’ aims to be a place of production and development of artworks in the context of the city of Sharjah.’
As well as exhibiting works by more than 80 artists from around the world, there are a number of events and programmes designed to support and nurture creativity for local and visiting participants. These include the March Meeting and the Artist-in-Residence Programme, a scheme that hosts visiting artists in Sharjah with the goal of developing context-related work. The opening days of the Sharjah Biennial 9 coincides with Art Dubai 2009 (18-21 March 2009), offering international visitors the opportunity to experience the diversity of cultural projects now underway in the Gulf region.
'The Sharjah Biennial has a track record as one of the few art institutions in the region leading a programme of support for artists’ productions,’ explains Jack Persekian, Artistic Director of the Sharjah Biennial 9. ‘This support needs to be sensibly extended to artists operating in the region and those working elsewhere who can positively contribute to the crucial dialogue amongst artists and practitioners, the exchange of experience and the progress of knowledge.’