What is the point of a biennial in the Middle East?
What is the point of a biennial in the Middle East? Social activist, art-centre founder Christine Tohmé explodes the concept with her Sharjah Biennial.
The art world stinks of money and rampant ambition, while there is deprivation, both physical and spiritual, all around us: this thought has led artists like Theaster Gates in Chicago to become activists in their communities, more like social workers or pastors than commodity producers.
Christine Tohmé, 53, a post-grad in contemporary art theory at Goldsmiths College London and curator of the current Sharjah Biennial (until 12 June), should be seen in the same light. Except that she founded her arts centre, Ashkal Alwan (Forms and Colours in Arabic) in Beirut, back in 1994, when Lebanon had been at peace for only four years after a long and cruel civil war, the cultural infrastructure of a country that used to be considered the France of the Levant was in ruins, and the people traumatised.
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