Sharjah Biennial 11: The Highlights
Photography and written by Pamella de Leon on March 17, 2013 for Art in the City here.
The Sharjah Biennial 11 is now in progress, with the theme of 'Re: emerge - Towards a New Cultural Cartography'. Yuko Hasegawa, this yearâs curator, was inspired by the courtyard in Islamic architecture, particularly the historical courtyards of Sharjah, where both elements of public and private life entwine, and where the objective political world and the contemplative space intersect. Hasegawa proposes a new cultural cartography that rethinks the Westerncentrism of knowledge in modern times and reconsiders the relationship between the Arab world, Asia, the Far East, through North Africa to Latin America.
Stretching from the Sharjah Art Foundation Al Mureijah to Calligraphy Square, Bank Street and Arts Area Al Shuweiheen, both inside and outside, there is much to see. This year there are more than 100 participants from 41 countries displaying commissions, music, installations, films, performances, talks and the annual March Meeting, and ArtintheCity brings you some of our highlights.
First off, at the Sharjah Art Foundation, where tall red flags marked with 1.0 guide visitors, there are five new SAF multi-functional art spaces, with open spaces, linked by open-air courtyards and rooftop terraces. At SAF Art Spaces GH, Wei Liuâs installation of wood, stainless steel, and doorframes with 'Merely a Mistake II' and 'Exotic Lands' questions, âWill new flowers blossom from the existing rotten system? Can we remain independent, capable of adding value? If not, then what shall we do?â Liu invites the audience to decide the meaning of the intricate installations.
Whereas, Marwan Rechmaouiâs UNRWA concentrates on recreating âvirtual Palestineâ maps by linking the communities in five refugee camps around Lebanon, giving a sense of each campsâ personal interests. After making the maps, Rechmaoui reproduced them in materials that are hard to come by in the camps, including concrete, rice and sugar bags.
 Seigen Ono, Ryuichi Sakamato and Shiro Takataniâs 'Silence' invites the audience to experience a Zen-like sensation similar to meditation. Itâs fulfilled by building walls that do not, or at least barely reflect sound, with panels to create a simple anechoic chamber while shutting out all outside noise.
Around SAF Art Spaces F, Sara Rahbar uses flags to create autobiographical works that arise from her personal experiences. With the flag as her recurring theme, she examines the concept of ideology, and belonging. Her series 'Flags' utilizes traditional fabrics to create aesthetically detailed textile collages of American and Iranian flags, contemplating how patriotism and nationalism can represent ideological and nationalistic violence.
Across from this, 'Delinking' by Taus Makhacheva proposes in three coloured photographs how performances prevail only in closed institutional spaces, failing to be received by secondary audiences and that there is life beyond an exhibit opening. Makcheva illustrates this by covering her face with traditional mehndi (henna designs from Africa and the Middle East) and as soon as her face is covered with symmetrical patterns, all the blank spots where skin was still visible have been filled in, leaving her face covered in mehndi paste. After washing it off, she was left with a mask of orange-brown stain that lasted about a week.
Her other work, 'Portrait of Avar', documents one of her performances when she dressed in a traditional Avar dress, travelling on public transport and mimicking a doll from an ethnographic museum. 'Portrait of Avar' questions cultural artistic stereotypes, asking if one is born with a certain identity, or if we can we choose how to identify ourselves. What is cultural representation, what sort of works are expected from an artists with a specific identity?
Over at SAF Art Spaces I, Gabriel Orozcoâs reproduced installation 'Sand on Table' entices art and science enthusiasts alike. Using sand found in Sharjah, accompanying texts and scientific chemical diagrams of authors that have tried to evaluate the unexpected phenomenon, Orozco displays the theory of self-organizing, where in chaotic action, it seems to organize itself into a an orderly pile.
In between the alleys, during different times of the day, Wael Shawkyâs 'Dictums 10:120' features 32 performers and Qawwali music with fragments of curatorial talks translated in Urdu from the last Sharjah Biennial. The result is mesmerizing as it turns a century old tradition of devotional Sufi music into a contemporary art experiment; capturing Sharjah. The project examines the relationship between art organizations and their communities.
In another courtyard, Shiro Takatani has created a composition with a fog machine and motorized mirror. The work is developed out of his previous work 'Cloud Forest', and brings in sunlight, exciting passers by in a mystical, cloudlike space.
At Bait Habib Shalawani (1.15), Lucia Kochâs 'Conversion' features sixty-eight panels made of polyester lighting filters and steel frames, playing with natural light in the small house. Created with colored filters, it aims to produce cinema without film by altering visitorsâ experience depending on the area they stand on, the time of day, and the angles of the panels. Koch intended new atmospheres to be created in every moment.
Moving on to Calligraphy Square (2.0), marked with tall green flags, Ernesto Netoâs installation tilted 'Enquanto a culturanossepra, a natureza nose' translated as 'While Culture Moves Us Apart, Nature Brings Us Together' is a dome-like crochet with rope, grass and other materials that quickly catch the eye. Upon first arriving in the Sharjah desert, Neto was perplexed with a mirage of an architectural construction with a dome and a veil in the center. Later on, he envisioned a similar structure, where it would have a flower stigma hanging in the center, from which water falling, creating a pond in the desert, allowing vegetables to grow and joined by animals.
While at the Calligraphersâ Studios, Carlos Amordesâ 'Weâll See How All Reverberates' presents an installation with cymbals in suspension from the ceiling, inviting visitors and professional musicians to transform the silent space to a harmonic or chaotic noise.
On to Calligraphy Centre (2.1), and Mohammed Ali Fadlabiâs 'The Prediction Machine' describe stories of saints and superheroes in painting installations inspired from Ethiopian church paintings, African barber salon art, Sun Raâs afrofuturism, retrofuturism and music. Through his art, he seeks to questions Western norms in art, the meaning of Europe today and the constant division between what is delegated the West and the non-West.
Shifting to Bank Street (3.0), marked with orange pillars, CAMPâs 'From Gulf to Gulf' consists of boats where residents can view them, and which draws from four years of dialogue, friendship and video exchange with sailors expressed in a feature length film. The Biennialâs screening venue provides a site for cell phone videos and audio will be transmitted between sailors, traders and passers by over the three-month exhibition.
A ten-minute walk away from this is Carsten Hollerâs 'Random Rolling Cylinder' (3.4), an installation that embodies doubt, uncertainty, participatory culture and âinfluentialâ environment. Consisting of a cylindrical pathway that leads to a central axis, while the pathway is stable, the cylinder around it slowly moves and rotates. The movement evokes the feeling of losing balance, even though the ground is steady.
The Arts Area (4.0) is marked with blue pillars and flags, and at Bait Al Serkal (4.5), BurakArikanâs 'Neoliberalism' displays a custom software and interactive screen which uses a survey and mapping software to express the relationships between expatriatesâ subjective experience with neoliberalism in the UAE and in their home countries. As the biennial progresses, it will grow to be a database that will be presented online.
Across from this, Nasir Nasrallah presents 'The Story Converter', an ongoing interactive mixed media installation. Nasrallah focuses on making art that is about experimenting and utilizing materials, either physical objects or ideas. Visitors are invited to write personal texts on cards which are then placed in a custom-made box. Visitors are unable to see as they write, and Nasrallah later uses these cards to create a drawing, integrating the texts with her own experiences and thoughts. The box embodies a machine that transforms inputs to outputs, alongside each other. Visitors are then presented with a handmade notebook made from recycled paper.
During the evening, the film programmes are not to be missed along with the performance and music commissions. Alva Notoâs heart thumping, electro beats with 'Unvrs' addresses the conceptual differentiation of a universal language, illuminating it with an integrated artistic approach and demonstrated through the different methods of audio analysis.
The Biennial continues until 13 May, and in April the education and public programmess will present workshops for filmmaking, illustration cartography, bookmaking, weaving and calligraphy.
Leaving the Sharjah Biennial we are left with many thoughts and considerations about Western centrism, status quo, identity, geographical, cultural, religious and political differences; how they constantly differentiate and collide, and art itself.
