This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
REVIEWS SHARJAH BIENNIAL
Lara Baladi, Justice
for the Mother, 2007,
photographic montage,
560 x 248 cm, printing
material variable.
Courtesy the artist
SHARJAH The Sharjah Biennial 8 was billed as addressing ‘Art, Ecology and the Politics of Change’. This was a premise variously described as radical, ironic and outright blind by the international
BIENNIAL 8 crowd who attended the opening, taking into consideration the Arab Emirate kingdom’s own rapid state of ‘urban development’; like Siamese twin Dubai, Sharjah is built on oil money and
SHARJAH EXPO CENTER manned by an immigrant workforce that makes up around 80 per cent of the population.
4 APRIL – 4 JUNE Presumably anticipating some eyebrow-raising, artistic director Jack Persekian and
his team (the Biennial is headed by Princess Hoor Al-Qasimi) stressed their desire to provoke
questions, not of_f er answers, something of a get-out-of-jail-free card, perhaps, but then again, if any Western country’s economic accountability were
grounds for exclusion from this kind of debate, art events that addressed issues beyond the standard creative spectrum would be pretty thin. Nonetheless
it was nigh impossible to view much of the art outside of the context of recent developments in the Gulf – artworld developments, that is.
The inaugural Gulf Art Fair, in March, along with the new Christie’s of_f_i ce, both in Dubai; the new Louvre in Abu Dhabi; and of course this Biennial
are breaking the idea of what contemporary art can be to the Emirates, a place where art is absent from the school curriculum. At Sharjah’s Expo Centre,
a vast space divided into a labyrinthine series of rooms, international players were at the fore. Mona Hatoum’s somewhat bland realisation of the red-hot
issue of global warming, Hot Spot (2006), struck the fi rst note at the entrance.
From here the Biennial’s premise was animated across a giddy variety of approaches. From Lara Baladi’s human-size interactive kaleidoscope Roba
Vecchia, The Wheel of Fortune (2007) to Cornelia Parker’s lumps of burned wood seemingly suspended in the air mid-explosion and Tomas Saraceno’s
huge balloons, what these works had in common was their grand scale and fi nesse, certain to impress both old hands and those with only a recent interest
in art.
This was but one aspect of the Biennial, however. Work that made biting statements with less fuss included that of Finnish artist Tea Mäkipää, who
travelled to Sharjah without the aid of an aeroplane to present 10 Commandments for the 21st Century (2006), instructions for an environmentally kinder
life printed on postcards and distributed to passersby. While at the art museum in the city’s heritage area Tue Greenfort’s smart, simple piece involved
turning the air-con down by only two degrees, a signifi cant gesture in a desert city whose interiors are practically permafrosted.
The big question raised by this event is whether the Biennial is just another glamorous cultural opportunity for jet-setters to enlarge their carbon
footprint or if there is a local audience. The answer might lie in the impressive projects involving children, such as Marjetica Potrc’s desalination device for a
local school or SOI Project’s Fruits, relational happening, where kids made and exchanged drawings for fruit. It suggested that unlike the commerce-driven
projects in Dubai, the Biennial is providing a real base for art in the Gulf, and an art which impacts beyond a world of privilege. Skye Sherwin
one.linfive.linfive.lin one.linfive.lintwo.lin AARRTTREVIEWREVIEW
p147-161 Reviews AR Jun07.indd 9 3/5/07 16:23:07
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Page 85 Page 86 Page 87 Page 88 Page 89 Page 90 Page 91 Page 92 Page 93 Page 94 Page 95 Page 96 Page 97 Page 98 Page 99 Page 100 Page 101 Page 102 Page 103 Page 104 Page 105 Page 106 Page 107 Page 108 Page 109 Page 110 Page 111 Page 112 Page 113 Page 114 Page 115 Page 116 Page 117 Page 118 Page 119 Page 120 Page 121 Page 122 Page 123 Page 124 Page 125 Page 126 Page 127 Page 128 Page 129 Page 130 Page 131 Page 132 Page 133 Page 134 Page 135 Page 136 Page 137 Page 138 Page 139 Page 140 Page 141 Page 142 Page 143 Page 144 Page 145 Page 146 Page 147 Page 148 Page 149 Page 150 Page 151 Page 152 Page 153 Page 154 Page 155 Page 156 Page 157 Page 158 Page 159 Page 160 Page 161 Page 162 Page 163 Page 164 Page 165 Page 166 Page 167 Page 168 Page 169 Page 170