The artists at Sharjah Biennial 8 tried to address the social, political and environmental concerns facing the World as we exhaust our planet’s resources, says James Bennett
It is almost 40°C and I am lost. There are no signs to the eighth Sharjah Biennial, and there is no one on the streets of the emirate I can ask. Luckily, however, a friend has given me a hand-drawn map and I am able to guess intuitively where on earth I am supposed to be headed
The map points to four main venues: the Sharjah Art Museum, the Sharjah Heritage Area, the more traditionally named Qanat Al Qasba and the Sharjah Expo Centre, which is where I finally park after nearly an hour in the Dubai-Sharjah traffic. Once inside, the expo is what you would expect from a conference centre with several fairly nondescript numbered halls next to one another, but upon further examination, a different world suddenly appears out of nowhere.
A bright red neon-lit globe beams warmly, a series of picture postcards are deliberately spread across an expansive white wall, symbolising the self-destruction of our planet, while a bizarre, twisted melee of dark shapes caught in what appear to be representations of trees hangs gloomily – not what you might expect in the UAE’s most conservative and strict emirate. But according to the organisers and many of the visitors I speak to as I stroll past various experimental artworks, this is the whole point: to show people what they have not seen before. And with the two-month-long art fair taking place every two years, it seems the surprise and novelty never wear off.
This year’s Biennial, one of the most important international art events in the Arab world, had the theme of ‘Still Life: Art, Ecology and the Politics of Change,’ with the environment playing a major role in many of the exhibits scattered across 17 area locations. And with 80 international artists invited to create site-specific installations – the emirate of Sharjah became a citywide canvas. The event has become so well regarded on the international art calendar that Sir Peter Blake, one of the founding fathers of pop art alongside Andy Warhol and the man behind the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, visited the Biennial saying he was ‘hugely impressed’. He added that he was pleasantly surprised by what he saw, liked the set-up and was a big fan of artist Cornelia Parker. Not a bad endorsement, all in all.
The event’s artistic director and renowned curator Jack Persekian explains that understanding the relationship between nature and the environment – while considering the social, political and cultural context of each artwork – is the focus of this year’s Biennial. ‘We are trying to look into how art is dealing with the issues that concern us,’ he says. ‘We have paintings, sculptures, video performances and installations in the public domain – all addressing the issues that are pertinent to society and hopefully will invoke a dialogue about future sustainable scenarios.’
Several artists I speak to echo the artistic director’s words, stating that the art they are showing here is all about exhibiting ‘propositions’ rather than ‘solutions,’ asking questions but not giving the answers, provoking thought and encouraging the viewing public to take its own positive actions The Biennial takes a very critical viewpoint but at the same time provides a broad platform for those who are for and against, as well as for sceptics and for pacifists,’ adds Persekian
These sentiments are summed up in an unnamed exhibit entitled Mindbomb that questions the viewer directly with a series of juxtaposed images that seem to ask, ‘How much longer can we go on destroying our way of life?’.
The images, deliberately resembling everyday advertising posters, contrast a fully grown tree with an atom bomb’s mushroom cloud, a palm tree against Dubai’s Jumeirah Palm Island made from reclaimed land and the disturbing image of a prisoner at the Iraqi Abu Ghraib jail, standing on a box facing possible electrocution, against that of a mountain peak. These are images that are designed to challenge our everyday consciousness, the way we live and the side of the story we choose to believe.
This year’s Sharjah Biennial featured paintings, performances, installations and film, but perhaps most dramatic were its performance installations that aimed to explore the effect of our daily lives on our surroundings. There were some incredible installation pieces on display. A new commission, initially proposed by Gustav Metzger in 1972, comprised a monumental tower of 120 cars arranged around a cubic glass case filled with the vehicles’ exhaust fumes, while another exhibit used air-conditioners to make a cloud to create artificial rain.
One of the strangest art installations came courtesy of Marya Kazoun. On her first visit to Sharjah, she was moved by the contrasts of poverty and wealth and she adds that the disparity between a wealthy and glamorous city such as Dubai compared with other poor countries in the Middle East inspired her work. The artist’s performance sees Kazoun suspended in a bubble, with five performers below her dressed in monstrous costumes used to represent the ugliness beneath the attractive façades that we see every day.
So what did the artists make of the UAE and Sharjah in particular? Marjolijn Dijkman, who is working on a concept about the future and how it is mediated in film, says she wants to make small future scenarios about how Sharjah and Dubai will look in 50 years or even 1,000 years. ‘You enter Dubai airport and you’re greeted with a sign that says, “Welcome to the city of tomorrow,” and I thought, that’s sci-fi,’ she says. ‘There is a city being built by people who will never live there. Where are these people? What will it look like when all these people come? Will it work? Will it be an empty city? Will it only be full of tourists?’ she wonders. ‘I think a lot of people don’t know.’
When asked what the artists make of Sharjah, Persekian adds, ‘They’ve never seen anything like it, of course.’ He believes that they have mixed feelings, that the scale of the development – as well as the achievement of building these major projects – is a blend of admiration and, more often than not, scepticism. Like Dijkman, ‘The artists question why this is happening, who it is going to serve, what effect it is going to have on the culture and the type of lives people will be leading here [in the Emirates],’ says Persekian.
The kind of life that people will lead in 50 years time remains a mystery, but some of the questions and perhaps the answers have been raised in the quiet, but colourful emirate of Sharjah in the past months.
THREE OF THE BEST
Lutz & Guggisberg ‘It’s just a group of birds made of pallets. We put them together into these robot-like bird shapes, then set them on fire, then put them out with water so they’re left half-burnt,’ says the Swiss pair, who showed their latest video piece at the Sharjah Expo Centre. Attempting to turn nature on its head, they filmed water, sand and smoke, transforming their natural movements from gravity into fantastical shapes. Water runs backwards up a waterfall, smoke from a burning forest is sucked back into trees and wet sand rises through the air… and then there are the birds made of pallets.
Mona Hatoum
The Lebanese artist created a giant cageshaped steel globe entitled Hot Spot, which tilts at the same angle as the earth. Hatoum outlined the contours of the planet in red neon, and she says: ‘On one hand it suggests that the whole world is a political hot spot caught up in conflict, but it also points to global warming.’
Tomas Saraceno
Argentinean artist and architect Saraceno, who made his Sharjah debut, says he is working with the concept of a flying city. ‘I’m presenting a prototype, which is a sphere,’ he says about his piece depicting six models suspended close to the exhibition ceiling. ‘It’s meant to be lifted by solar energy, with a one degree difference in temperature between the inside and the outside.’
www.sharjahbiennial.org
