Artists for SB13 and March Meeting open call

The Sharjah Biennial is one of the most interesting contemporary art events in the international schedule, not least because it’s an unexpected fixture in the calendar of what is traditionally regarded as one of the more conservative Emirates. It has also maintained a very high standard of innovative and often exciting art that usually gains from its principal locations in Sharjah’s heritage area. So it’s an eye-opener on many counts – and this year’s Sharjah Biennial stretches the envelope a little bit further.

SB13 curator Christine Tohme has clearly drawn on her personal and professional networks in rethinking the role of the biennial, particularly in the radical restructuring and expansion that has taken SB13 well beyond the borders of Sharjah. Crucially, Tohme’s approach questions the conventional format of large-scale, centralised exhibitions; her vision is more dynamic, more discursive and more broadly rooted.

At the core is this list of 64 artists participating in SB13 Act I:

Noor Abuarafeh Lawrence Abu Hamdan Abbas Akhavan Tamara Al Samerraei Allora & Calzadilla Maria Thereza Alves Kader Attia Tonico Lemos Auad Ismaï l Bahri Sarnath Banerjee Yto Barrada Abdelkader Benchamma Ursula Biemann and Paulo Tavares Dineo Seshee Bopape Jonathas de Andrade Mariana Castillo Deball Roy Dib Vikram Divecha Barış Doğrusöz Koo Donghee İnci Eviner Em’kal Eyongakpa Harun Farocki Fehras Publishing Practices Future Farmers Daniele Genadry Deniz Gul Shadi Habib Allah Taloi Havini Takashi Ishida İz Öztat and Fatma Belkıs Işık Lamia Joreige

Christoph Keller Samir Khaddaj Mahmoud Khaled Nesrine Khodr Basim Magdy Metahaven Hind Mezaina Mochu Oscar Murillo Joe Namy Uriel Orlow The Otolith Group Christodoulos Panayiotou Khalil Rabah Raqs Media Collective Stéphanie Saadé Abdullah Al Saadi Natascha Sadr Haghighian Ghassan Salhab Roy Samaha Massinissa Selmani Setareh Shahbazi Nida Sinnokrot Walid Siti Monika Sosnowska Zhou Tao Mario Garcí a Torres Jorinde Voigt James Webb Rain Wu and Eric Chen Paola Yacoub Fathi Zamroud

 

Act I is the main incarnation of SB13, the exhibits and activities actually in Sharjah between 10 March and 12 June (Act II is in Beirut in October, with satellite exhibitions, film screenings and talks)

January sees the first of four regional expansions which invite four curators or “interlocutors” to create varied permutations of artistic conversation and production in their sites; Dakar in Senegal opens the sequence, with Istanbul to follow in May, Ramallah in August, and Beirut in October (as part of the Act II programme).

These places were selected not so much for their geopolitical attributes, more for the longstanding affiliations that Tohme can call on.

The interlocutors will each develop a programme rooted in their local context but based on a specific keyword, to which a pool of local researchers, artists and thinkers will also respond.

location	curator	keyword
Dakar	Kader Attia	water
Istanbul	Zeynep Oz	crops
Ramallah	Lara Khalidi	earth
Beirut	Ashkal Alwan	culinary

 

SB13 as a whole carries the label Tamawuj, meaning a wave-like swelling, surging, or fluctuation. Tohme argues that just as the thematic keywords are “porous and feed into one another”, so SB13 places researchers and interlocutors in conversation with one another and with Sharjah – “its multi-city, multi-part programmes are envisaged as infrastructures to channel knowledge transmission and information sharing between artists, curators, editors, researchers and the general public”.

And to push the metaphor a bit further: “This fluidity of knowledge irrigates new, enduring terrains of collaboration and references the threefold meaning of Tamawuj: a rising and falling in waves; a flowing, swelling, surging or fluctuation; and a wavy, undulating appearance, outline or form”.

SB13 Act I opens with the professional preview on 10 March 10 and an Opening Gala Dinner and Biennial Awards ceremony the following night.

March Meeting 2017 open call In conjunction with SB13’s opening week, the organiser Sharjah Art Foundation is running the tenth annual March Meeting on 10-14 March. There’s an open call for participants in a series of talks, keynote lectures and performances; SAF welcomes applications from any artists, writers and researchers working on topics related to SB13’s conceptual framework. If you’re interested, submit a proposal by 10 January – full details here.