Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry (SB16), launching on 6 February, unveils more than 650 works by nearly 200 participants, including more than 200 new commissions. Curated by Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Ginwala and Zeynep Öz, the Biennial convenes under the title to carry, a multivocal and open-ended proposition. Exploring the ever-expanding questions of what to carry and how to carry it, SB16 is an invitation to encounter the different formations and positions of the five curators as well as the constellation of resonances they have gathered.
The works in the Biennial are presented alongside an extensive programme of activations, performances, 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 life within spaces that are not our own and how we respond to these spaces through the cultures we hold. 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 therefore becomes a space for collective wayfinding, helping audiences make sense of the world by reflecting back, inwards and across in times of transition.
The curators, each with distinct processes and offerings, present their Biennial projects collectively and individually, allowing room for listening and processing. Through the artworks as well as workshops, publications, sonic experiences and other activities, they draw on their different approaches to spark conversations and share narratives from many geographies, languages and perspectives. Their diverse curatorial approaches come under the umbrella of a single question: What does it entail to carry a home, ancestors and political formations with you?
Alia Swastika focuses on the interplay of power, poetics, politics and the foundational role of women’s knowledge as well as the conception of 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 speculative futures as well as reciprocity and respect. Natasha Ginwala centres littoral sites in the Indian Ocean and water wells in Sharjah as reservoirs that avow ancestral memory, place-making and sonic remembrance. Finally, Zeynep Öz turns a historical lens onto the societal and economic systems in which we participate, specifically those developed in response to accelerated changes in technology and science.
The five curators’ projects form confluences throughout the exhibition, with the curators rearranging them into hybrid constellations in each space. Hosting works selected by multiple curators, each venue proposes a conceptual framework, often inspired by the cultural and historical context of the location. Through this collaborative effort of searching for resonance, curatorial ideas find collective expressions that add different layers to reading and experiencing the Biennial.
Among the communal themes addressed by the curators are oceanic crossings, regional affinities and cultural continuities, many considered within the context of Sharjah’s coastal geographies and maritime history. Mariam M. Alnoaimi’s work remembers the Gulf region’s relationships with water bodies as living entities and reperforms local rituals 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 as 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. Cassi Namoda’s paintings depict acts of labour and scenes of motherhood along the shoreline of Mozambique and Afro-Lusophone storytelling to attest to ancestral memory-keeping and matrilineal stewardship. Megan Cope’s sculpture Kinyingarra Guwinyanba (2024), meaning place of oyster rocks, is situated in Buhais Geological Park as a reference to deep geological time and the shallow sea that covered Sharjah millions of years ago.
As witnesses to environmental injustice and collapse, artists address their ties with colonial projects and reconfigure relationships through Indigenous knowledge systems and communal worlding. Speaking to the devastation of land and customary food sources, Yhonnie Scarce’s work, consisting of hundreds of hand-blown glass yams, recreates the radioactive rain clouds caused by the nuclear testing conducted by the British in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. In her new work, Like a Flood (2025), Adelita Husni-Bey reflects on Libya’s failing water infrastructures, the ongoing impact of extraction during Italian colonisation, and the concept of climate adaptability. 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 industries. Luana Vitra’s installation, pulling from the artist’s personal history of growing up in a mining state in Brazil, invites us to imagine a future devoid of mineral exploitation. The wheat patches and kinetic sculptures by Risham Syed entwine traditional practices from community kitchens, harvest cycles and Sikh philosophy amidst the planetary crisis of hunger and food insecurity. Betty Adii uses natural pigments sourced from the forest of her native Papua, which is facing threats of calamitous deforestation, while composer Septina Layan responds to Betty Adii’s work with voices of lamentation. Septina Layan will perform the lament during opening week at Kalba Ice Factory.
Knowledge, mythologies and political narratives carried by women artists manifest through different expressions in the Biennial. Building on her research about the Syrian Egyptian singer Asmahan who died in a mysterious accident in 1994, Helene Kazan attempts to reclaim feminist histories through song and poetic testimony. Faye HeavyShield, primarily informed by the art of the Canadian prairies and her personal history as a Senior Kainai artist and native Blackfoot speaker, presents two new works that extend from land, language and the body. Rajni Perera’s works feature femme hybrids and protagonists inspired by South Asian mythology and speculative cosmologies, embracing radical futurity and planetary turbulence. Womanifesto presents a quilted shelter-like structure produced by women’s communities all around the world, including one in Sharjah’s Al Madam, to offer a transnational space for women to share their stories and build platforms for solidarity.
Some artists hone in on technology, both old and new, to explore its economic and societal implications and its effect on global history. Blending humour and historical context, Akira Ikezoe presents paintings and a new animation, referring to nuclear accidents that have evaded humanity’s attempts at regulation. Pratchaya Phinthong transposes the future of ‘green energy’ to archaeological forms and 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. Jorge González Santos revives primal technologies engaging fire, earth clay and plant knowledge to create a topography of mutual learning, and Fernando Palma Rodríguez, a mechanical engineer and pioneer of Indigenous robotic art, reclaims ancestral knowledge as a blueprint for a more sustainable future.
The Biennial foregrounds collective processes that forge new approaches to dialogue, collaboration and co-production. 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. Devised as an ‘open-ended’ process under common questions of personal transformation in the midst of daily political and social turmoil, Ayşe İdil İdil, Betül Aksu and Okyanus Çağrı Çamcı, with curator Merve Elveren, present their project Day to Day in two forms—a publication and 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. Bilna’es, an ‘adisciplinary’ platform invested in generating new models of resource distribution, presents a vinyl publishing project, a group exhibition about debt and a musical performance, which will take place during opening week.
Different sonic experiences form foundational moments in this Biennial, which is multivocal at its core. 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. In addition to Bilna’es’ vinyl, other Biennial vinyl 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, a series of 13 books created in parallel with her Biennial exhibition, inspires an aural form in Al Dhaid, where six sound artists respond to the presence or lack of trees, water and irrigation systems in a former date orchard.
Full list of participants:
Adelita Husni-Bey; Akinbode Akinbiyi; Akira Ikezoe; Akram Zaatari; Albert L Refiti; Alia Farid; Aluaiy Kaumakan; Ana Iti; Anchi Lin (Ciwas Tahos); Anga Art Collective; Arthur Jafa; Ayman Zedani; Aziz Hazara; Betty Adii with Septina Layan; Bilna'es (Adam HajYahia, Baraari, Basel Abbas, Dina Mimi, DJ Haram, Drew McDowall, Freddie June, Haykal, Hiro Kone, Jota Mombaça, Julmud, Makimakkuk, Martin Wong, Muhannad Al Azzeh, Muqata’a, Oscar Gardea, Ruanne Abou-Rahme and SCRAAATCH); Bint Mbareh; Brian Martin; Cannupa Hanska Luger; Cassi Namoda; Cécile B. Evans; Chandralekha; Chun Shao; Citra Sasmita; Claudia Martínez Garay; Concrete Thread Repertoire; Daniel Boyd; Day to Day (Ayşe İdil İdil, Betül Aksu, Okyanus Çağrı Çamcı with Merve Elveren); Dian Suci Rahmawati; Dilek Winchester; Doruntina Kastrati; Driant Zeneli; Ellen Pau; Emily Kam Kngwarray; Emre Hüner; Fatma Belkıs; Fatma Belkıs and Onur Gökmen; Faye HeavyShield; Fazal Rizvi; Fernando Palma Rodríguez; Fiona Pardington; Güneş Terkol; Hashel Al Lamki; Helene Kazan; Hellen Ascoli; Heman Chong; Hugh Hayden; Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser); Ipeh Nur; Joe Namy; John Clang; Jorge González Santos; Julianknxx; Kaili Chun; Kaloki Nyamai; Kapulani Landgraf; Kate Newby; Liu Chuang; Lorna Simpson; Luana Vitra; Luke Willis Thompson; Mabel Juli; Mahmoud Khaled; Maïa Tellit Hawad; Mangku Muriati; Mara TK; María José Murillo; Mariam M. Alnoaimi; Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien; M'barek Bouhchichi; Megan Cope; M'hammed Kilito; Michael Parekōwhai; Mila Turajlić; Mohammed Al-Hawajri, Dina Mattar and family with Ala Younis; Mónica de Miranda; Monira Al Qadiri; Morris Foit; Nadia Christidi with Sary Moussa and Joseph Kai; Nadiah Bamadhaj; Naeem Mohaiemen; Nasser Al-Yousif; Ndidi Dike; Nge Lay; Noémie Goudal; Olivia Plender; Paky Vlassopoulou; Pallavi Paul; Pastizal Zamudio with Andrea Torreblanca; Photo Kegham – Kegham Djeghalian Sr and Kegham Djeghalian Jr; Pratchaya Phinthong; Rafaat Majzoub; Raffaela Naldi Rossano; Rajni Perera; Raven Chacon; Reetu Sattar; Restu Ratnaningtyas; Richard Bell; Risham Syed; Rita Mawuena Benissan; Rossella Biscotti; Roy Samaha; RRD (Anuar Portugal, Bruno Ruiz, Joel Castro, Laura Muciño and Sergio Torres); Rully Shabara; Saffronn Te Ratana; Sakiya; Salima Hakim; Sancintya Mohini Simpson; Sangdon Kim; Sarah Abu Abdullah; SERAPIS MARITIME; Sevil Tunaboylu; Shivanjani Lal; Shubigi Rao; Singing Wells; Sky Hopinka; SM Sultan; Stephanie Comilang; Steven Yazzie; Subash Thebe Limbu; Suzanne Lacy; T. Vinoja; Tara Al Dughaither; Te Matahiapo Collective; The Voice of Domestic Workers; Tishani Doshi; VISWANADHAN; Vitória Cribb; Vladan Joler in collaboration with Kate Crawford; Wael Shawky; Womanifesto; Ximena Garrido-Lecca; Yhonnie Scarce; Yim Yen Sum; You'll Know When You Get There (Ayumi Paul, Fazal Rizvi, Rajyashri Goody and Sumayya Vally); Yvonne Koolmatrie; and Zadie Xa with Benito Mayor Vallejo
March Meeting
7–9 March 2025
10:00 pm–1:00 am (Ramadan hours)
Al Qasimiyah School, Al Manakh, Sharjah
Taking place during Ramadan, the 2025 edition of March Meeting presents three evenings of reflections on the Biennial title, ‘to carry’, with a special programme of critical conversations, performances, workshops and communal meals. Selected offerings explore polyphonic modes of storytelling in the present, Indigenous thinking around transformation, and live poetry readings. Visitors can also enjoy a daytime programme, including curator- and artist-led tours.
April Acts
18–20 April 2025
Across Sharjah Biennial 16 venues
April Acts is a weekend programme activating different aspects of the Biennial through panel discussions, artist talks, participatory workshops, film screenings and live music performances.
The Biennial experience will extend throughout its four-month run with weekly screenings, a variety of workshops for different age groups, and artist conversations, both on- and offline.
Season 2 of the official podcast of Sharjah Biennial will launch in the coming weeks, featuring insights and stories about SB16 projects from the artists and curators.
Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry
Full curatorial statement
to carry a home
to carry a history
to carry a trade
to carry a wound
to carry equatorial heat
to carry resistance
to carry a library of redacted documents
to carry rupture
to carry Te Pō [the beginnings]
to carry change
to carry songs
to carry on
to carry land
to carry the language of the inner soul
to carry new formations
to carry the embrace of a river current
to carry sisterhood and communal connection
to carry the rays of a morning without fear
The Sharjah Biennial 16 title, to carry, is a multivocal and open-ended proposition. The ever-expanding list of what to carry, and how to carry it, is an invitation to encounter our different formations and positions and to gather a constellation of resonances.
The Biennial title, ‘to carry’, entails understanding our precarity within spaces that are not our own while staying responsive to these sites through the cultures that we hold. It also signifies a bridge between multiple temporalities of embodied pasts and imagined futures, encompassing intergenerational stories and various modes of inheritance. What do we carry when it is time to travel, flee or move on? What are the passages that we form as we migrate between territories and across time? What do we carry when we remain? What do we carry when we survive?
Thus, ‘to carry’ proposes the Biennial as a collective wayfinding, a modality of sense-making and insistent looking—back, inwards and across—instead of a ‘turning away’ amidst tides of annihilation and tyranny. Sharjah Biennial 16 curatorial projects reflect on what it means to carry change and its technological, societal, animistic or ritualistic possibilities. As community doulas would hold space for others during moments of transition, the projects collectively form a threshold space for experiments and collaborations, in which we compose divergent stories, understand failures and dark moments, and hold room for tenderness and rage.
As carriers of different processes and offerings, the curators have cultivated their projects together and apart, allowing room for listening, mutual support and the sharing of resources. Diverse curatorial methodologies—from residencies, workshops and collective production to writing, sonic experiences and expanded publications—are constantly present in the milieu of the Biennial, encouraging critical conversations. Sometimes, projects by different curators sit together in one venue to form a wild polyphony; at other times, they occupy an entire space to recite a story. Together, they form an evolving collection of narratives told from multiple perspectives, geographies and languages.
Free and open to the public, Sharjah Biennial 16 runs from 6 February to 15 June 2025.
For more information, please visit sharjahart.org.
Sharjah Biennial 16 Patrons:
Mohammed Afkhami
Haleema Al Owais
Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi
Crescent Enterprises LLC
Maysoune Ghobash
Sawsan Al Fahoum Jafar
Al Midfa Investments Group
Olivier Georges Mestelan
Carla Chammas and Judi Roaman
Reem El Roubi
Maria and Malek Sukkar
About Sharjah Art Foundation
Sharjah Art Foundation is an advocate, catalyst and producer of contemporary art within the Emirate of Sharjah and the surrounding region, in dialogue with the international arts community. The Foundation advances an experimental and wide-ranging programmatic model that supports the production and presentation of contemporary art, preserves and celebrates the distinct culture of the region and encourages a shared understanding of the transformational role of art. The Foundation’s core initiatives include the long-running Sharjah Biennial, featuring contemporary artists from around the world; the annual March Meeting, a convening of international arts professionals and artists; grants and residencies for artists, curators and cultural producers; ambitious and experimental commissions and a range of travelling exhibitions and scholarly publications.
Established in 2009 to expand programmes beyond the Sharjah Biennial, which launched in 1993, the Foundation is a critical resource for artists and cultural organisations in the Gulf and a conduit for local, regional and international developments in contemporary art. The Foundation’s deep commitment to developing and sustaining the cultural life and heritage of Sharjah is reflected through year-round exhibitions, performances, screenings and educational programmes in the city of Sharjah and across the Emirate, often hosted in historic buildings that have been repurposed as cultural and community centres. A growing collection reflects the Foundation’s support of contemporary artists in the realisation of new work and its recognition of the contributions made by pioneering modern artists from the region and around the world.
Sharjah Art Foundation is a legally independent public body established by Emiri Decree and supported by government funding, grants from national and international nonprofits and cultural organisations, corporate sponsors and individual patrons. Hoor Al Qasimi serves as President and Director. All exhibitions are free and open to the public.
About Sharjah
Sharjah is the third largest of the seven United Arab Emirates and the only one bridging the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Reflecting the deep commitment to the arts, architectural preservation and cultural education embraced by its ruler, Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Sharjah is home to more than 20 museums and has long been known as the cultural hub of the United Arab Emirates. In 1998, it was named UNESCO's 'Arab Capital of Culture' and has been designated the UNESCO ‘World Book Capital’ for the year 2019.
Media contact
Alyazeyah Al Marri
alyazeyah@sharjahart.org
+971 (0)6 5444113
