Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) has announced the three curators for the next Sharjah Biennial, opening in March 2019: Zoe Butt, Omar Kholeif, and Claire Tancons. The 14th edition of the Sharjah Biennial (SB14), Leaving the Echo Chamber, will ‘question the possibilities for producing art when material culture is under constant threat of human destruction and climate degradation’.
According to SAF, Leaving the Echo Chamber will explore subjects ranging from migration and diaspora, to concepts of time and interpreted histories, in relation to today’s continuous loop or “echo chamber” of information and history. Invited to respond to the overarching issues and inquiries Leaving the Echo Chamber propose, the curators will present three distinct exhibitions, for which they will invite a artists from around the world, as well as from the UAE and the surrounding region.
Zoe Butt’s Journey Beyond The Arrow examines the movement of humanity and the tools that have enabled (or hindered) its survival and which aid or abet mobility, to illuminate the necessary diversity of humanity and its exchange across the globe. Omar Kholeif’s Making New Time examines time as a unit of experience that is at once singular and collective. Claire Tancons’s Look for Me All Around You questions if obscurity is the harbinger of futurity, darkness the site of seeing, and blackness the scene of unmasking.
Hoor Al Qasimi, President and Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, said: “Contemporary life is dominated by competing information and fluctuating histories – a reality that raises important questions about the trajectory of contemporary art, as well as the conditions in which it is made… The aim of the Biennial is to deepen the context of these questions through thought-provoking and often experiential works of art.”
7 November 2017
