Field Trip: Sharjah Biennial 12: “The Past, the Present, the Possible”
By HG Masters
Curated by Eungie Joo, Sharjah Biennial 12, featured a compact lineup of 50-plus artists and groups from 25 countries, with many newly commissioned projects and the use of several new sites around the Gulf emirate. Eschewing the grab-bag presentation and heavy polemical themes commonly deployed in biennials, Joo instead showcased artists’ practices in depth or created opportunities for ambitious, site-specific solo projects. The result was more of an exhibition than a festival, as Joo nudged the biennial format away from wide-angled superficiality that make them akin to displays at today’s art fairs. Here’s a look at a handful of the memorable projects from “The Past, the Present, the Possible,” before a full review is published in the May/June issue of ArtAsiaPacific.
Early evening on the waterfront along Sharjah’s Heritage and Arts area.
Near the clustered boats was a barely discernible flag, by BYRON KIM,
in a pitch-perfect imitation of Sharjah-sky blue, an extension of his
interest in capturing atmospheric color. All photos by HG Masters.
The exhibition was opened after the arrival of Sharjah’s ruler Sheikh Sultan al-Qasimi (center right) and his daughter, Sheikha Hoor al-Qasimi (center left), who is president and director of the Sharjah Art Foundation.
The coral-lined courtyards of Sharjah’s heritage district and the Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) spaces, built around and between them, are some of the most distinctive spaces used by the biennial. Here, DAMIEN ORTEGA’s Talking Wall
(2015) takes its cues from the district’s architecture, echoing the
site
An assembled portion of DANH VO’s We the People
(2010- ), a 250 piece-by-piece reproduction of the Statue of Liberty in
copper repousse — made in a Chinese factory. Here, 13 pieces form Lady
Liberty’s left armpit, rising to the level of the structure around it.
HAEGUE YANG’s An Opaque Wind
(2015) drew on the history of Korean expatriates who, largely in the
1970s, were recruited to the Gulf in order to develop its oil industry.
Her courtyard installation combined attributes of Sharjah’s traditional
architecture, such as wind towers, with modern vents, shipping
containers, and bricks and concrete blocks, and featured a small room
with woven mats and Korean news program playing on a television.
In Karesansui (2015), TARO SHINODA
created a "dry landscape garden" in the Japanese tradition that he had
studied. Using local rocks and sand, Shinoda added two small openings
beneath the garden that slowly drained the sand, like an hourglass,
creating the pair of holes seen here.
CINTHIA MARCELLE
also worked with the metaphor of shifting sands, using a process that
from the construction industry for the production of plaster. She placed
a roof of mesh-sifters above this courtyard, and throughout the
exhibition, workers walking on the structure above sifted the sand into
the courtyard, creating fine showers of sand and covering the tracks of
previous visitors.
Suspended from the ceiling of a SAF space was RAYYANE TABET’s dramatic Cyprus
(2015), recalling a wooden boat that the artist’s father had purchased
in order to transport the family from Lebanon to Cyprus 29 years earlier
during the civil war. The journey was never fully attempted as Tabet’s
father quickly realized it would be a doomed voyage.
In one of the biennial’s compelling but unlikely pairings of artists, in the same building as Tabet’s ship were BYRON KIM’s "Sunday Paintings" of the past year. Kim has been making these works
every Sunday since 2001 and he records not only the appearance of the
sky but, in diaristic entries written on the surface, what has been
happening in his and his family
Another prominent aspect of the biennial was Joo’s decision to feature
small monographic shows of experimental figures, including Etel Adnan,
Lala Rukh, Chung Chang-sup, Saloua Raouda Choucair, and, as seen above,
of FAHRELNISSA ZEID (1901-91), who was a member of an early avant-garde group in Istanbul and later in Paris.
At the Sharjah Art Museum was a survey of SALOUA RAOUDA CHOUCAIR’s
sculptures, whose forms echo calligraphy, lines of Islamic poetry and
betrayed her abiding interest in geometry.
Hanging from the side of Bait Obaid al-Shamsi were MARK BRADFORD’s recent series Untitled (Buoy) (2014), whose surfaces recall old seafaring maps and were hanging from colorful ropes.
Further afield, in a Port Khalid warehouse slated for demolition was MICHAEL JOO’s Locale Inscribed (Walking in the desert with Eisa towards the sun looking down)
(2014-15), in which he had painted the far wall in a reflective silver
and excavated a deep ravine in front of it down to the port’s waterline.
Throughout the space were grooves cut in the concrete floor that echoed
falaj water channels.
Near Joo’s installation in Port Khalid was ASUNCION MOLINOS GORDO’s WAM (World Agriculture Museum)
(2010/2015). Her installation fused the style of an old colonialist
museum with the contemporary language of sustainable crop development.
HASSAN KHAN
was given the honor of being the first artist to work in SAF’s newest
space, the so-called Flying Saucer building, designed by Sheikh Sultan
al-Qasimi himself in the 1970s, and until recently a fried-chicken
restaurant. Khan added brightly colored filters to the walls, and worked
with Andeel, one of Egypt’s most prolific cartoonists on a series of
billboards for the roof. His black-and-white film depicts an absurdist,
existential comedy about two men arguing over a hand slapper and a cap
of invisibility, in what read as a possibly a dark, political allegory.
Sharjah Biennial 12: “The Past, the Present, the Possible” can be seen from now until June 5, 2015, at various venues in Sharjah.
HG Masters is editor at large for ArtAsiaPacific.
