While Jorge Tacla was only an adolescent during the 1973 coup against Chile’s democratically-elected socialist president Salvador Allende, the upheaval left an irrevocable mark on his politics and practice. A third-generation Chilean of Palestinian and Syrian descent, the artist has been working between Santiago and New York since 1981, unravelling the intricate geopolitical causalities binding Latin America, West Asia and the United States.

Across the Gulf, the malleable sand bears witness to cycles of construction and redevelopment as solar pressure catalyses decades of futuristic mega-projects to ‘green’ the arid terrain. The motifs of the sun and its intense heat as well as the sand and its pervasive orange hue often serve to represent and condense the Gulf’s complex ecologies and aspirations.

Drawing from a world of visual and material excess, Brazilian artist Leda Catunda offers a vivid reflection on the sensory saturation of modern-day life. A citation from the artist’s own words, the exhibition title reads as a contemporary confession that captures the complex entanglements of taste, desire and identity.

In its inaugural exhibition, the Photography Gallery presents a panorama of artistic experimentation and engagement through the medium of photography. Drawn from the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection, the works navigate the sociopolitical terrain of the last six decades against a backdrop of the compressed, and often fissured, processes of modernisation and decolonisation.