‘To carry’ the weight of history, identity, and resistance: inside Sharjah Biennial 16

As the clock struck 10 am on Thursday, January 6, 2025, a palpable buzz filled Al Mureijah Square. A crowd of creatives and art enthusiasts had gathered, murmuring in anticipation as they awaited Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, President and Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, to take the stage to inaugurate the 16th edition of the Sharjah Biennial.

When the ceremony began, and the Sheikha’s speech was followed by reflections from the biennial’s five curators: Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Ginwala, and Zeynep Öz, the attendees gradually fell silent absorbing the curators’ impassioned words about the importance of understanding precarity in unfamiliar spaces while staying responsive to them through the cultures we hold. As the speeches finished, silence turned to applause. Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry, after two years of preparation, officially opened. 

Doors to the galleries, installations and performances on display inside the restored traditional houses, enclosures and courtyards of Al Mureijah were opened, encouraging visitors to reckon with questions surrounding our collective existence and how we navigate the world: What do we carry when it is time to travel, flee or move on? What do we carry when we remain? What do we carry when we survive?

“The idea of ‘to carry’ became a generative thinking space for us. One that allowed for the kind of multiple ways of approaching and dealing with what’s going on in the world for each of our practices,” Bahraini-Singaporean curator Amal Khalaf told Dazed MENA. “How do we hold this grief? How do we carry it?”

Alia Swastika, whose curatorial and artistic practice over the last 10 years has centred on issues and perspectives of decoloniality and feminism, told Dazed MENA that the title ‘to carry’ “functions as the umbrella of the many different projects that we developed together”. Turkish curator, writer and co-founder of the Spot Production Fund in Istanbul, Zeynep Öz, said the title captures the essence of the projects on display. “To carry is a verb. It requires an action rather than something passive. 

“It signifies the changes that we’re going through and transformations across time, across geographies, across political affiliations.”

In the spirit of these ideas, scores of the biennial’s collections and commisions come from Indigenous artists – many of them from the Global South – presenting artworks, technologies, and traditions that are more urgent to engage with and learn about now than ever before, at a time of ecological disaster and cultural erasure emanating from unfettered neoliberal capitalism. “It [the biennial] is such a unique opportunity to build kinship with each other, and we embrace that wholeheartedly,” Natasha Ginwala, curator, writer and researcher from India, who previously served as Artistic Director of the 13th Gwangju Biennale, told Dazed MENA.

With his installation, Jatibonicu, Jorge González Santos recuperates the knowledge of the Indigenous Taíno people of the archipelago of Puerto Rico through communal candle making at the 16th Sharjah Biennial. Jatibonicu integrates the material culture, value systems and the ecologies of the Taíno people, fostering mutual learning and restoring cultural practices.

Jatibonicu is one of many installations centred on Indigenous practices and traditions on show at the biennial. On display are also be Yhonnie Scarce’s glass installations highlighting the devastating impact of nuclear testing on Indigenous lands in Australia, and Fernando Palma Rodríguez’s robotic sculptures centring on issues facing Indigenous communities and ways of life in Mexico. Alongside these impressive installations are a plethora of other works that highlight Indigenous ways of life, traditions, and innovation – to encourage a modality of sensemaking insistent on looking back, inwards and across amidst the relentless tides of annihilation and tyranny ravaging our world.

“I think indigeneity is really what gives you sovereignty, which is important,” Alia told Dazed MENA. “As someone who lives a so-called modern life, I think they [Indigenous communities] have lots of wisdom that we can learn from – especially now, during an ecological crisis.”

The biennial’s focus on working-class Indigenous and diaspora stories finds particular relevance in the emirate of Sharjah – a place with deep historical roots and traditions and a burgeoning working-class diaspora culture. Sharjah serves as a relevant, contemporary backdrop to the multifaceted art world exploring the spirit of ‘to carry’. The biennial, rather than being in a fixed location, is scattered across 17 venues all over Sharjah. These venues, which extend beyond the city centre and include spaces in Kalba, Al Dhaid, and Al Madam, are nestled within the independent oud, garment, electronics stores, restaurants and cafeterias that make Sharjah a sprawling hub of international stories of the Global Majority, and an important cultural space.

Natasha, whose practice has centred on looking at the Indian Ocean as the space of shared histories and affinities, told Dazed MENA: “Sharjah has been a space where solidarities have grown organically through a kind of cultural vanguardism, and a spirit of contemporary relationality that has grown here organically, and there is a sense of radical hospitality. 

“There is a way to arrive here with clarity on the political and social schisms and class dynamics and complexities of hierarchy that exist.”

The opening day of the biennial was immense – a packed programme that had no shortage of things to do or see from the official opening at 10 am until 5 pm. Yet, you could only experience a fragment of the art, installations, films, talks and performances that the biennial, which was over two years in the making, has on show.

“In a world where there’s so much categorisation now, I think it’s really wonderful to be able to be in this more responsive listening and responding process by making a biennial – by showing art,” Amal told Dazed MENA. “We are ourselves from so many parts of the world and we’ve each brought with us practices, stories, and politics from so many spaces. We hope that they speak to the diverse cosmopolitan kind of context of the UAE and the region, which is so diverse and full of many languages.”

There are over 600 artworks, including more than 200 new commissions by almost 200 artists, across a myriad of venues on display at the biennial, which makes the 16th edition of the Sharjah Biennial the most ambitious yet. 

“Sharjah is just such a generous and exciting space to visit. As an emirate it holds just so much in terms of its diverse landscape,” said Natasha. “The idea of the Sharjah Biennial is to inscribe art in everyday life – not just of the city centre but also all of these surrounding areas and neighbourhoods.”