Sharjah Biennial 16: A Trip to the Sharjah Art Museum
Sharjah Biennial 16 calls on the joys, pains, histories and memories of life, the narrative between each piece and venue exceptionally clear and hard to miss - a testament to the curatorial strength of the show as a whole.
While each venue had its own appeal, at the Sharjah Art Museum, the works and overall narrative of the biennial as a whole shone through. As opposed to the newer venues - such as Al Serkal house and Al Hamriyah Studios - whose architecture called to contemporary aesthetics, the Sharjah Art museum provided a quiet backdrop, allowing both the works and the curatorial message of the show as a whole to take center stage. Walking down the ground floor corridor, each alcove containing its own array of works, a narrative begins to unfold. Within the first room, Faye HeavyShield’s works call on the artist’s Kainai roots, her histories carried through the works on display.
Moving into the next alcove, a parallel narrative emerges through Gaza’s ‘Photo Kegham’, highlighting memories and identities being actively erased. The emotional weight of lost histories is thereby hammered home, as both exhibits present an intimate portrayal of a struggle that feels both immediate and universally resonant.
In the next room, Nasser Al Yousif’s linoleum prints are beautifully displayed in warm surroundings. Depicting the traditions and everyday scenes of Bahrain - the artist’s home - the link between these works and the rooms that came before is not immediately clear. However, the connection becomes clearer upon reading the exhibition text: “in 1994 Al-Yousif became visually impaired, losing his vision completely a little over a year later. Yet he continued to work […] from memory.” Taking this into account, the works take on a new light - each image becoming not just a record of the familiar, but a poignant depiction of the artist’s desire to hold onto a visual world he had lost. Therefore, the works, much like those before them, speak to memory, absence, and the fragility of what we carry.
The remainder of the exhibit unfolds in much the same way that the first three alcoves did - with poignant and resonant links between each. Within the final room, we are surrounded by a multitude of overlapping oral testimonies, private letters, personal photographs & archival material from three films dissecting processes of decolonization. The overlapping voices, images and material create a dense and almost overwhelming atmosphere - perhaps intentionally so - serving as a culmination of the biennial’s curatorial message: a meditation on the weight of collective memory.