SHARJAH BIENNIAL 12 THE PAST THE PRESENT THE POSSIBLE (original) (raw)

Biennials between the Local and the Global: Sharjah Art Foundation and its Visitors

The study of biennial exhibitions is an underdeveloped field that is rising in importance due to their prominence in the proliferation and development of global contemporary art. Texts to date focus on the curatorial aspects of these exhibitions, with limited critical assessment of the role of the visitor and, to a lesser extent, the host organizations of these exhibitions.

Exhibiting and Writing on Art from the Middle East – Some Recent European and North American Exhibitions and their Catalogues.pdf

RACAR/Canadian Art Review-Revue d'art canadienne, 2017

This paper discusses recent Western exhibitions of art from the Arab world and Iran and their catalogues: 25 ans de créativité arabe, Paris/Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, Institut du Monde Arabe/Silvana Editoriale, 2012, 215 p., ISBN 9788836624317; Massimiliano Gioni, ed., Here and Elsewhere, New York, New Museum, 2014, 279 p., ISBN 978-0-915557-05-9, Unedited History, Séquences du moderne en Iran des années 1960 à nos jours, Paris, Paris-Musées, 2014, 199 p., ISBN 9782759602452; Fereshteh Daftari and Layla S. Diba, eds., Iran Modern, New York/New Haven and London, Asia Society Museum/Yale University Press, 2013, 256 p., ISBN 9780300197365; Omar Kholeif, ed., Imperfect Chronology: Arab Art from the Modern to the Contemporary – Works from the Barjeel Art Foundation, London/Munich/New York, Whitechapel Gallery/Prestel Verlag, 2015, 272 p., ISBN 9783791354859 (Trade edition), ISBN 9783791366302 (Museum edition).

Review of the book: Contemporary Art from the Middle East: Regional Interactions with Global Art Discourses (by Pamela Karimi)

London Middle East Institute, SOAS, University of London, 2015

What is the location of contemporary Middle Eastern art in the broader context of global art or in light of such concepts as diaspora, deterritorialisation, transnationalism, hybridity and cosmopolitanism? Are ‘local’ and ‘global’ opposites or are they interdependent? Th e essays in Hamid Keshmirshekan’s edited volume, originally presented at a 2013 conference at the London Middle East Institute at SOAS, off er fresh responses to these queries. Together they make one of the fi nest recent volumes on contemporary Middle Eastern art, examining local artistic aspirations in relation to mainstream global art trends.

Biennales in Palestine-Thinking Art and Making Art.pdf

The Riwaq Biennale marked Riwaq’s new approach and image of openness, networking and dialogue, not only with cultural heritage organisations, but also with the community at large, locally and internationally. This essay sheds light on the biennales in Palestine that have a responsive/radical perception of space (where things happen) and time (when things happen and for how long), and against the practices of artistic production and biennales that lend themselves to already formulated agendas. I critically engage with the Riwaq Biennale (RB) and Qalandiya International (Qi) to further speculate on the role of biennales and art in changing not only the content and form, but also the management modalities and the managerial structures of events in the public sphere. Biennales in Palestine, I claim, have a management twist to the artistic events and artistic production, and are therefore permanently oscillating between creative (thinking) and non-creative (making) artistic work. This twist acknowledges the inherent dialectical relation in the field of artistic production that strives to alternately celebrate and conceal the art and the practical world behind it. This turn also tries to make visible the structures that shape the lives and the practices of people, while making use of symbolic enterprise to point at the debilitating conditions that the artists, the managers and the audiences alike have to endure.