Sharjah Art Foundation

Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present

SB15 is now closed. Thank you for your support. Updates on the Biennial can be read here.

A Healing Path for Phantom Pain (2022) and other works

A Healing Path for Phantom Pain (2022) and other works

Kiluanji Kia Henda

Shaped by the experience of coming of age during the post-independence Angolan Civil War, Kiluanji Kia Henda reflects on the ruptures of colonial rule and conflict while framing Angolan identity within broader global historical narratives.

Call Me When You Get There (2020) and other works

Call Me When You Get There (2020) and other works

Mame-Diarra Niang

Mame-Diarra Niang’s photographic work abstracts, fragments and decontextualises landscapes and portraits relating to her ancestral roots and Senegalese- Ivorian-French upbringing. Niang’s interrelated photographic series dwell on memory, selfhood and race.

Dream Boats (2022)

Dream Boats (2022)

Lubaina Himid

Lubaina Himid’s artistic and curatorial practice illuminates the omissions and hypocrisies of western colonial histories, centring the contributions of marginalised figures, particularly Black individuals, to cultural life in Europe.

Magic carpet land (2020) and other works

Magic carpet land (2020) and other works

Marianne Fahmy

Marianne Fahmy’s films explore the relationship between natural phenomena and human habitation and its role in structuring reality and the invention of the future.

Nocturnal Body (2022) and other works

Nocturnal Body (2022) and other works

Felix Shumba

Felix Shumba’s multidisciplinary practice interprets sociopolitical issues such as dislocation and migration through the use of existing imagery culled from archival and media sources.

Nova (2019) and other works

Nova (2019) and other works

Cao Fei

Cao Fei’s practice examines how technological advancements intersect with popular culture and urban transformation in contemporary China.

Of Men and Gods and Mud (2022)

Of Men and Gods and Mud (2022)

Ali Cherri

Ali Cherri’s sculptures, drawings and installations unravel complex narratives of environment, archaeology and heritage in West Asia and the broader region.

Para la coca (2023) and other works

Para la coca (2023) and other works

Laura Huertas Millán

French-Colombian visual artist and filmmaker Laura Huertas Millán’s works reflect the complex realities and ecologies produced by colonial relations in Abya Yala.

Spandex installations (2023) and other works

Spandex installations (2023) and other works

Joiri Minaya

Joiri Minaya is a Dominican- American multidisciplinary artist whose work investigates the continuity of colonial power hierarchies, often exploring the performativity of tropical identity and its commodification.

Speak the Wind (2015–2020) and other works

Speak the Wind (2015–2020) and other works

Hoda Afshar

At the intersection of conceptual, staged and documentary image- making, Hoda Afshar’s lens- based artistic practice explores the representation of gender, marginality and displacement.

The Peacock’s Graveyard (2023)

The Peacock’s Graveyard (2023)

Amar Kanwar

With narratives drawn from social conflict, oral history traditions and nonlinear storytelling, Amar Kanwar’s films offer a poetic vantage point from which to consider the ideologies and solidarities that populate the contemporary world.

Various archival materials

Various archival materials

Kimowan Metchewais

Kimowan Metchewais (1963–2011), a Cree visual artist of the Cold Lake First Nations reserve in Alberta, Canada, challenged the clichés projected onto Indigenous art.