Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation
Sharjah Biennial 14
Leaving the Echo Chamber
March 7 – June 10, 2019
http://sharjahart.org
Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) will feature nearly 90 established and emerging artists from around the globe, over 60 new commissions, as well as many never-before-seen works in the next Sharjah Biennial. Open to the public from March 7 to June 10, 2019, the 14th edition of the Sharjah Biennial (SB14), Leaving the Echo Chamber, will explore the possibilities and purpose of producing art when news is fed by a monopoly of sources, history is increasingly fictionalised, when ideas of ‘society’ are invariably displaced, when borders and beliefs are dictated by cultural, social and political systems.
Curators Zoe Butt, Omar Kholeif and Claire Tancons, who have collaboratively conceived the SB14 theme, will present three distinct exhibitions bringing together a range of experiences and works—including major commissions, large-scale public installations, performances and film—to create a series of provocations about how one might re-negotiate the shape, form, and function of the “echo chamber” of contemporary life, towards a multiplying of the echoes within, such vibration representative of the vast forms of human production—its rituals, beliefs and customs. Butt, Kholeif, and Tancons will also spearhead three distinct programmatic approaches for SAF’s March Meeting, an annual convening of local and international artists, curators, scholars and other arts practitioners who explore topical issues in contemporary art through a programme of talks and performances. March Meeting 2019 will coincide with the opening of SB14. Full programme details and participants will be announced in 2019.
On view in buildings and courtyards across the city’s arts and heritage areas, as well as in SAF’s studios in Al Hamriyah, in the East Coast city of Kalba and other spaces in Sharjah, Leaving the Echo Chamber will explore subjects ranging from migration and diaspora, to concepts of time and interpreted histories—giving artists the agency to explore stories that echo in a different way, revealing differing means of connecting, surviving and sustaining a collective humanity.
The complete selection of participating artists follows below. Artist biographies and full curatorial statements are available at sharjahart.org/biennial-14
