An initial artist list and a curatorial framework have been announced for next year’s Sharjah Biennial 16, which runs 6 February to 15 June 2025.
The curatorial framework isn’t too specific – there’s no overarching title for SB16, for instance. Instead we’re told their ongoing and existing artistic projects “either respond to diverse sources of embodied knowledge and intergenerational kinship through modes of song, lament and ritual; or lean into notions of cross-cultural alliances and resonances … Other projects focus on communal learning – articulated through weaving, translating and performing – to engage with the texture and rhythm of various lands and waters, and to compose sites for encounters. What does it entail to carry a home, ancestors and political formations with you?” We’re expecting a little more specificity in the next few months.
In the meantime it’s pleasing to report that initial artists’ list is interestingly broad, which is the plus side of having so many curators from so many different parts of the geographical and art worlds. We homed in on Adelita Husni-Bey, the Italian-Libyan visual artist and pedagogue associated with in anarcho-collectivism, theatre, and critical legal studies – which has often meant extensive collaborations and workshops on systemic problems and the role of the law, with the results documented in video or photographs documenting the process. She represented Italy at the 2017 Venice Biennale.
Cécile B. Evans was in some headlines earlier this year with a short AI-generated film which ran as the backdrop for the Miu Miu show during Paris Fashion Week. Her work typically deals with what it mean to be human and how digital technology impacts the human condition, and it’s invariably thought-provoking.
Womanifesto is a Thai-based ‘international art exchange programme’ centred on the work of women artists from around the world via art exhibitions, workshops and seminars, and residencies; it will be interesting to see what the team comes up with for SB16.
Stephanie Comilang is the Filipina-Canadian filmmaker and video artist responsible for the 2016 festival success Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come to Me, Paradise), a self-proclaimed “science-fiction documentary” that follows three Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong. Hers is a very direct way of addressing the concept of diaspora, migration and home. Also from the world of moving image is Pallavi Paul, a video artist and film researcher whose practice is particularly concerned with the representation of ‘truth’, “poetic explorations of the tension between the document and its aesthetic utterance – the documentary”.
Fatma Belkıs we know from SB13, with highly relatable work that touched on issues related to solidarity, community and the commercial and bureaucratic limitations that constrain contemporary life. As her website puts it more generally, “She is interested in
narratives of individuals going through a transformation, specifically the ones who prefer not todo this alone …” She works with text, video, and printed matter. She also thinks cats are ideal roommates, which scores her extra points in magpie’s estimation.
And Akinbode Akinbiyi – born in Britain to Nigerian parents, now based in Berlin – is one of the handful of men on the preliminary artists’ list. Akinbiyi has been described as a photographer of the streets; he’s certainly a doyen of the image that attempts to engage with and understand the modern metropolis (particularly major African cities). For documenta 14 he was quoted as saying: “Over the past years I have realised that I am looking for my childhood, that kind of innocence and childlikeness that I had growing up in London and Lagos, and which I feel is no longer there. Whenever I find such moments – fragments of this lost innocence – I take photographs. At the same time, I try to understand what’s happening today in the cities I document”.
The complete roster of artists will be announced in the coming months, but also on the preliminary list are Akira Ikezoe; Alia Farid; Dian Suci Rahmawati, Ipeh Nur and Restu Ratnaningtyas; Hellen Ascoli; Heman Chong; Joe Namy; Jorge González; Kaloki Nyamai; Kapulani Landgraf; Kate Newby; Mahmoud Khaled; Michael Parekōwhai; Mila Turajlić; Mónica de Miranda; Pratchaya Phinthong; Rajni Perera; Rossella Biscotti; Saffronn Te Ratana; Serapis Maritime; Shivanjani Lal; Steven Yazzie; Ximena Garrido-Lecca; and Yhonnie Scarce.
Be the first to comment