Third Text

30 April 2025

Akin Oladimeji

‘Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry’, 6 February – 15 June 2025, Sharjah City, Al Hamriyah, Al Dhaid, Kalba, Al Madam, and other locations across the Emirate of Sharjah

Herman Chong, Perimeter Walk, 2013–2024, commissioned by UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, development of Perimeter Walk supported by M Art Foundation, installation view, Sharjah Biennial 16, Old Al Jubail Vegetable Market, Sharjah, 2025, photo by Motaz Mawid

Let’s start with the setting. Sharjah is sun-drenched, the glitter of the sunlight, its ferocity matching the fierce intelligence of several of the works I see here. A conservative state in the desert, which has hosted the biennial since 1993. This latest biennial was orchestrated by a team of five distinguished curators: Natasha Ginwala, Amal Khalaf, Zeynep Öz, Alia Swastika and Megan Tamati-Quennell. This panel has developed their vision through both collaborative and independent efforts, emphasising stories from varied global viewpoints and regions. Their approach aims to address complex themes such as systemic inequality, displacement, and the transmission of collective and personal memories. The exhibition is a multifaceted exploration of contemporary issues, drawing on the curators’ diverse backgrounds and expertise.

With Sheika Hoor Al-Qasimi at the helm, the Biennial has gained greater prominence with each iteration, but censorship accusations have been following it for the last few years. The tenth Sharjah Biennial, in 2011, faced controversies when Jack Persekian, Artistic Director of the biennial from 2004 to 2011 and at the time the director of the foundation that organises the event, was relieved of his duties by Sultan bin Mohamed Al-Qasimi, the emirate’s ruler since 1972. The biennial faced challenges sparked by an artwork, Maportaliche / It Has No Importance (2011), an installation by Algerian artist, writer and journalist Mustapha Benfodil, that featured headless dummies donning t-shirts emboldened with texts decrying rape, torture and homicide. The placement of the installation in a busy public courtyard, frequented by many Emirati families, parents and their children, triggered protests due to the explicit content of the text. Following these protests, it was seen as necessary to remove the mannequins and fire Persekian as the immediate solution to the controversy. ^[1]  The Sheikha took over, and other curators seem to have learnt from the Persekian episode. For instance, I saw no works tackling LGBT issues, and swear words in a dialogue in one of my favourite works were bleeped out, lending a strange air to the work.

In the film, Raafat Majzoub, a writer and architect teaching on the Art, Culture and Technology programme at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) uncovers world construction using fiction, mutual education and the prototyping of traditional customs. He gathered a team, including his childhood friend, and transformed waste they had gathered into the elements of a sculpture, exemplifying the communal energy that emerged from an economic downturn. The work Streetschool Prototype 1 (2019) was a project produced in Lebanon during the rubbish crisis. Reimagined as Streetschool Prototype 1.1, Everything – in your love – becomes easy (2019/2024) in this iteration of the biennial, the project was again a very local affair as Majzoub recycled design components from buildings in Sharjah dating from the 1970s that were in the process of being remodelled. The installation consisted of a sculpture with a screen in the middle showing the making of the earlier Lebanese version with sometimes coarse, relaxed dialogue and the clowning around of Majzoub’s long-term friend, a natural screen presence. This exhibit draws attention to the dynamic possibilities of embodied knowledge exchange processes, which can be moved across locations and answer to, or transform, contemporary circumstances.

Raafat Majzoub, Streetschool Prototype 1.1, Everything – in your love – becomes easy, 2019/2024, installation view, Sharjah Biennial 16, Al Mureijah Art Spaces, Sharjah, 2025, photo by Motaz Mawid

A giant shimmering screen made up of beads strung together vertically like pearls on a necklace captures a knife slicing through an engorged oyster to reveal the chiselled gemstones nestled among dumpling-like pearls – a surreal snapshot taken from Stephanie Comilang’s 2025 film installation, Search for Life II. This artistic arrangement presents the Filipina-Canadian artist’s intricate narrative of the global pearl business. The installation turns heads with its shimmery beauty, interweaving documentary sequences of Filipino free divers and their counterparts in Chinese freshwater pitcher farms with a dazzling performance by a young Filipino-Emirate woman, reminiscent of K-pop stars. Overlaying typical TikTok sales pitch recordings, where one runs into peculiar treasure stones, the art project becomes a tantalising journey for once-desired treasures that are now wrought with the direst of consequences. When I met her in Sharjah, the artist told me that as a bicultural person, she has always been intrigued by stories of migration, how migrants make space for themselves, how they impact society and how that society affects them.

With Megan Tamati-Quennell being the first Maori curator (out of the group of five women) to be appointed to help run such a prominent event, First Nation artists (by which I mean those there before European conquest in Latin America, Australia and New Zealand) were numerous. They brought their inherited wisdom and addressed history with force. Claudia Martínez Garay weaves the Peruvian llama, an indigenous creature crucial to the Quechua heritage, into her gorgeous tapestry dubbed Chunka Tawayuq Pacha (2022). This piece captures the intersection between the past and current events centred on chilli peppers and a toilet roll carried on a llama's back. In doing so, Claudia plays with multiple temporalities, fostering a Quechua cultural vantage point anchored on holistic time.

In the desert setting of the Al-Madam buried village, a ghostly site, Hugh Hayden’s Brier Patch consists of wooden desks resembling those found in elementary schools. The desks have a twist: tree branches force their way through the seats, intertwining into complex, layered formations with deep meanings. The gathered desks evoke the orderly arrangement of classroom seating. Drawing on global folklore, the work invokes the image of the brier patch – both a sanctuary for some and a peril for others – highlighting the contrasting experiences within the education system for those at different ends of the economic scale. The work lends an eerie feel to the dusty environment it is situated in.

At one location, I was involved in Albert Refiti’s participatory event. I and other attendees sat in a circle with him, introduced ourselves and who we were thinking of at that moment. We then drank a very bitter liquid he called kava. Refiti, who also had images on the wall of similar rituals he has orchestrated, draws on his Samoan heritage and it made for a solemn and fascinating experience. Another work of performance art I admired was that by Luana Vitra, who is from a part of Brazil, Minas Gerais, famous for minerals. Vitra created a spiral on the ground, half of which was blue iron oxide powder (echoing the colour of the skirt of the Afro-Brazilian deity of iron and war, Xango) while the other half was powdered iron oxide in its natural black colour. The artist then walked barefoot through the spiral, her repetitive walking meditation akin to the repetition some of the deity’s followers engage in when praying. Evoking themes of the environment, racial justice and the re-examination of history, she seemed to search for healing in the landscapes she occupied.

Luke Willis Thompson’s contribution was a film, Whakamoemoea (2025), in which a Maori woman maps out in her native language the history of how her people were dominated, how they resisted and, in this fictional work, adopted a constitution that reflects an Indigenous multinational state. The monologue was delivered with force and conviction by Oriini Kaipara, a broadcaster based in New Zealand. The audience was spellbound. A video work I found equally compelling was Suzanne Lacy’s multichannel video installation The Circle and The Square (2015–2017). As she has been leading the way in socially engaged work since the 1970s, it was not surprising to see she had filmed a choir singing Christian songs and worshippers engaged in Sufi chanting – all residents of the town of Pendle in northwestern England, a region that has suffered from the collapse of the textile industry. ^[2]

Olivia Plender’s history-steeped displays have a warped humour about them. They consist of a group of drawings, a board game and costumes. The set of drawings Bring Back Robin Hood (2008) depict a group, the Kobbo Kift that broke off from the Boy Scouts, and the outfits are her versions of what later members wore when the group changed into a political party seeking a transformation of the UK’s financial system. The board game ‘Set Sail for the Levant: A Board Game about Debt’ (2007) satirises the privatisation of land in Britain’s history.


Steven Yazzie, Meandered, 2024, installation view, Sharjah Biennial 16, Kalba Ice Factory, Sharjah, 2025, courtesy of the Tia Collection, Santa Fe, photo by Shanavas Jamaluddin

Steven Yazzie’s synaesthetic, panoramic oil paintings are immense in size and complexity, employing saturated hues and daring gestural brushwork. As a person of Navajo and Laguna Pueblo ancestry, Yazzie has a strong personal relationship to the reservations where the works are set. The images are semi-abstract; thus the viewer should not expect a literal demonstration of the land. Instead, the paintings offer a subjective and focused range of viewpoints.

At the old Al Jubail Vegetable Market, with its archways, high windows, weathered walls and faded signs like ‘Al Majaz Dates Sale’ and ‘Al Jazzat Juices’, empty stalls stand in silence. At one end, a sprawling installation of wood and steel mesh by Palestine’s Sakiya artist group reimagines the US Capitol Building as a chicken coop. At another end of the market, Herman Chong presents Perimeter Walk (2013–2024), an installation with 550 postcards. Chong’s work revolves around walking the outskirts of his hometown, Singapore. Through his photography, he delves into the island’s overlooked areas, providing a more complex and nuanced view that goes beyond the usual landscape and coastal imagery. His images engage in a continuous conversation with viewers, complicating the ways in which we share and consume images in daily life.

Sakiya, Capital Coup, 2024, installation view, Sharjah Biennial 16, Old Al Jubail Vegetable Market, Sharjah, 2025, commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation, photo by Motaz Mawid

A trend that seems to be developing, and which I observed in Sharjah, is the use of AI to bolster an idea. Rully Shabara used it to create a mock-ethnographic presentation of artefacts from the fictional, utopian inherently egalitarian civilisation of Khawagaka (2012–ongoing). In museum-like displays about this civilisation, Sharbara presents a dictionary, using artificial intelligence modelled on Javanese and Arabic, and a documentary. He deliberately appears to express scepticism toward the risks of romanticising historical material cultures.

Rita Mawuena Benissan explores Ghana’s cultural history in her assemblage You Must Cross and Seek (2024). There are two oversized royal umbrellas – one of which features a film projection depicting rituals and coastal life in the Volta region – flanked by vivid portraits of Black figures. Embroidered tapestries and traditional stools denoting Ewe sovereigns and spaces for gathering are included. It is a poetic contribution. Arthur Jafa’s LOML, completed in 2022, is a tribute to his friend Greg Tate, a musician and critic. With a screen that stayed black throughout and with overlapping soundtracks, the theme of death was palpable.

Rita Mawuena Bennissan, various works, 2024, installation view, Sharjah Biennial 16, Al Hamriyah Studios, Sharjah, 2025, photo by Danko Stjepanovic, courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation

Kegham Djeghalian Jr displays a substantial collection of his grandfather’s photography. ^[3]  Kegham Djeghalian (1915–1981), who was of Armenian heritage, relocated to Palestine in the 1930s. In 1944, he founded Photo Kegham, the first photography studio in Gaza during the British Mandate period. Over the next four decades, his studio became a central fixture in Gazan society, playing a significant role in documenting the city’s evolving history. Djeghalian’s photographic work spanned social, official, political, documentary and studio genres, capturing Gaza’s daily life and major events through periods of upheaval – including the British Mandate, the Egyptian administration, the Israeli occupations of 1956 and from 1967 onward, and the aftermath of the displacement of Arabs during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Through his lens, he chronicled the transformation of Gaza and its people, leaving a visual legacy that remains vital to understanding the city’s past. With hindsight, and considering the future inhabitants’ suffering and the devastation of the region, it is a moving and melancholic presentation.

Kegham Djeghalian Sr and Kegham Djeghalian Jr, Photo Kegham of Gaza: Unboxing – The Studio (detail), 2020–2024, collection of Kegham Djeghalian Jr, installation view, Sharjah Biennial 16, Majlis Shaikh Mohammed, Sharjah, 2025, photo by Shafeek Nalakath Kareem

The absence of works examining sexuality or other taboo subjects was noticeable. Either the all-female team of curators was clearly conscious of not selecting such work, since the UAE has Islam as an official state religion, or they decided to concentrate on other pressing and relevant issues. Other writers present in Sharjah, who are used to seeing all kinds of issues explored in contemporary art, all commented on this possible repression. However, this Sharjah Biennial, according to Amal Khalaf, one of the curators, in her speech to the press at the opening, is an offering with dispossession as a major theme. Sheika Al-Qasimi leaned into this. In her speech at the same event, she emphasised her support for the people of Gaza caught in the middle of the current conflict. Overall, the exhibition, in the way it fosters a dialogue between artists mostly drawn from the Global South, is worthwhile, with work discussing several significant concepts – migration’s impact, colonialism, indigenous approaches to landscapes – and highlighting the precarious nature of the modern world.

^[1]    See ‘An unwarranted dismissal in Sharjah’, e-flux Announcements, 11 April 2011

^[2]    See ‘The Circle and the Square, Brierfield, United Kingdom, 2015–2017’; and ‘Who is Suzanne Lacy’ on the Tate Gallery website

^[3]    See Kegham Djeghalian’s article ‘Unboxing Gaza’, in Afterall, issue 57: ‘Palestine and the World’, published online 24 September 2024

Akin Oladimeji is a critic, lecturer and writer. He is currently in the first year of a PhD at University College London (UCL) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.