Events Local February 04, 2025

16th Sharjah Biennial Kicks Off with 200 Artists

The 16th Sharjah Biennial begins featuring 200 artists worldwide, presenting over 650 works across 17 venues. Themes of cultural intersections and environmental resilience highlighted.


16th Sharjah Biennial Kicks Off with 200 Artists

Soon, the 16th Biennale will start in Sharjah, featuring the participation of 200 artists from all over the world, presenting more than 650 works and 200 new pieces. The exhibition will be displayed in 17 venues throughout the city of Sharjah and in the cities of Al-Hamariyah, Al-Dhaid, and Kalba. Besides this, various performances, musical events, and film screenings will take place.

Under the guidance of five curators - Alia Suwaisati, Amal Khalif, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Jeanou and Zeynab Oz - the exhibition is titled "Our Journeys". It aims to reflect a multitude of voices and open up space for different interpretations. The Biennale focuses on exploring how we carry our burdens through our life journeys and how we convey these loads around ourselves.

Participants and viewers are invited to explore various artistic methods, accepted by the five curators, and visions, inspired by their evaluative experience. The curators have worked both together and individually, developing their projects while considering different methods, providing space for interaction and support.

Evaluation methodologies will continuously be present at the events, starting from artistic residencies and workshops, ending with publications promoting a consistent critical dialogue and creating new forms of artistic representation with different perspectives, geographies, and languages.

The curators' projects offer a space for their artistic vision at the exhibition, with each of them concentrating on diverse aspects, ranging from feminist knowledge to technological interventions. The works are unified in the exhibition venues, creating shared spaces, fostering collective expressions, and enriching the Biennale with new ideas.

Within the frameworks of historical and territorial geographies of Sharjah, curators address several overarching themes related to maritime migrations, coastal waters, and regional connections, emphasizing the importance of preserving indigenous cultures and local traditions. Throughout the exhibition, the photography of Mariam an-Naimi examines historical and contemporary relations in the Gulf region's water zones, while Akimbodi Akimbi creates a series of photographs, fixing trading processes and public events in diverse settings.

The creative group of the Serabis Marataym, uniting art, design, and fashion, alongside local producers and artisans, creates a project, inspired by the history of maritime migrations in the region, utilizing materials from docks and industrial installations of Sharjah. The paintings of Chasi Namody commemorate the memory of ancestors, reflecting on everyday life and maternal management over land and resources.