Sharjah Biennial 10: Plot for a Biennial
Suzanne Cotter (curator of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project), Rasha Salti (curator and creative director of ArteEast) and Haig Aivazian (independent curator, artist, writer) could probably not have imagined the winds of change sweeping through the Middle East when they first met to discuss the tenth Sharjah Biennial in early 2010. Though most of the works were commissioned well before revolutionary fervour had enveloped the region, we can clearly detect traces and tensions that gauge a particular political climate. The curators could not have chosen a better title and conceptual framework than Plot for a Biennial: on the one hand it provides a narrative line and a set of motifs which can loosely be followed throughout the projects, on the other hand it toys with themes – or rather, scenes, if we want to follow the filmic curatorial inspiration – of deception, treason, devotion, affiliation and translation, the ingredients standard in any conspiracy. Literally organised as five ‘scenes’ in a film, across five major venues, the works are placed at the Sharjah Art Museum and in old houses and public spaces across Sharjah’s Arts and Heritage district.The many forces that push and pull at biennials took a particularly nasty turn when the ruler of Sharjah abruptly fired biennial artistic director Jack Persekian three weeks after the opening, over the ‘shameful content’ of Algerian artist Mustapha Benfodil’s mixed media installation. Persekian had been involved with the Biennial since 2005, and had placed the art event on the international art map, lending Sharjah a unique and competitive position against the commercial art fair ArtDubai and the prestigious museum projects of the Louvre and Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi.It is with these footnotes, and in the backdrop of the political transformations in the Middle East and North Africa, that this Biennial makes a strong and genuine statement, yet also indicates how brittle the relations between power and artistic production are. For this very reason, the curators should be praised for not forcing a curatorial diktat, and shying away from overbearing ‘urgent’ or ‘radical’ thematics of the day, or swanky considerations which overshadow the artists’ intent. The real protagonists of this biennial are the artworks, from over seventy artists, many from the Middle East, North Africa and South East Asia. The pieces speak for themselves, albeit in different tongues. Curator Suzanne Cotter writes in the catalogue that ‘[f]or many, if not most artists, the idea of treason is irresistible’. Deception, in its many guises, found its way through a considerable number of works. For example, the video Face Scripting: What Did the Building See? (2011) by Shumon Basar, Eyal Weizman, Jane and Louise Wilson draws on the 2010 assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mahbouh by Mossad agents in a Dubai hotel. Slow-paced, and zooming in on the detail of the architectural syntax of hotel rooms, lobbies, as well as on the technology of facial recognition, the film provides a legion of props for a crime.Amar Kanwar shows that systems, whether informational or political, can also be penetrated through small individual actions. His beautiful 19-channel video installation The Torn First Pages (2004-2008) is an ode to Burmese bookshop owner Ko Than Htay, imprisoned for tearing out all first pages from the journals and books he sold, which contained the regime’s propaganda. In the light of the developments in the Middle East, and Persekian’s dismissal, Kanwar’s piece rings particularly strong. This is also true for the two contributions of Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi: Moderate Enlightenment (2007), a series of eighteen miniature paintings, and the site-specific installation Blessings upon the Land of my Love (2011). The delicate miniatures show pious Islamic figures engaged in everyday actions such as holding an umbrella in the rain, walking with a colourful laptop bag, or sporting fashionable socks. Humorous and slightly odd, Qureshi counters the idea of stereotypical representations. The large site-specific installation in the Beit Al Serkal courtyard magnifies the style of traditional Kangra and Basholi miniatures. Details show foliage and floral forms meticulously painted in strokes of red and white paint, while the overall impression is one of a violent massacre: pools and splashes of blood seem to stain the courtyard. Palestinian artist Khalil Rabah, on the other hand, toys with our idea of perception and offers a mise-en-abyme of exhibitions. Strategically positioned in-between floors, on the staircase of the Sharjah Art Museum, Rabah shows a series of fifty photorealist paintings, based on photo documentation of Palestinian art exhibitions held over the past fifty years. The paintings deconstruct the scenario necessary for any exhibition (the visitors, the officials, the artwork, the venue, the media presence), but at the same time provide us with an untold history of Palestinian modern and contemporary art. History, aerospace, and geopolitics come together in Emily Jacir’s elegant black and white animation Lydda Airport (2007-2009). Jacir’s piece echoes a time before the Palestinian city Lydda became the Israeli city of Lod, and before its international airport became inaccessible for Palestinians. The film speaks of nostalgic longing and loss, but also of national pride. Similar sentiments are to be detected in Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s project on the Lebanese Rocket Society. It is a little known fact that Lebanon had its own space program in the 1960s. Hadjithomas and Joreige’s research is an attempt to critically read and reappropriate this feat of Arab modernity. They even manufactured a replica of the Cedar IV rocket and transported it under tight security to be installed as a monument at Beirut’s Haigazian University, home of the Lebanese Rocket Society. A second Cedar IV replica was placed in the middle of the Sharjah Art Area. This took months of negotiations and cutting red tape. Their installation at the Sharjah Art Museum consisted of research videos, and eight prints of the Cedar IV rocket, each showing a different section of the rocket. Together the eight images make up the complete visual of the eight-metre rocket, underlining the fragmentary nature of history and memory. If you will, this project could be read as a soft guide to the Biennial, wherein fragments of histories, plots, narratives covert and overt continue to fold and unfold, and where one never really knows where allegiances truly lie. Willingly and unwillingly, the plot of this biennial continues to write itself.Nat Muller is a curator and critic based in Rotterdam
Nat Muller