![]() At times, it acts like an uncritical presentation of the varied ways artists have grappled with colonialism and state violence. Still, there are instances in which the biennial would have benefitted from greater curatorial discernment. ![]() In one of the video works within Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s immersive, site-specific installation, titled Until we became fire and fire us (2023), are the words: “Where there is violence, there is always a trace.” For these artists, it is the enduring remnants that become fertile ground for excavation. The soundscape of apartheid and displacement is abstracted into the cries of birds. The melodies come from the national birds of bordering countries with hostile histories or adversarial presents, including the Palestinian sunbird Israel’s hoopoe Mexico’s crested caracara and the U.S.’s bald eagle. Instead of sounds of war, we hear a disorienting cacophony of birdsong. Chorus (2017), Chorus I (2015–19), and Chorus II (2015–19)-modeled after World War II pre-radar listening devices used to locate enemy aircrafts-invite viewers to step into their large-scale metal structures. Violence and the way that its horrors often cannot be articulated into words are also conveyed in Reena Saini Kallat’s abstract sound-sculptures. Just under four minutes long, the work is nothing short of devastating. A clear standout is Erkan Özgen’s short film Wonderland (2016), in which 13-year-old Syrian refugee Muhammed, who is hearing impaired, urgently and emotionally signs and gestures the atrocities he’s witnessed following the 2014 Islamic State attacks. Like Once Again… and Um Al Dhabab, the biennial’s strongest works are not only conceptually rich and formally enticing, but concerned with confronting violence without visually recreating it. Quoting Martinican poet and political activist Aimé Césaire, a voiceover states that it would’ve been better if museums were never created, and the Global South was instead allowed “to live alongside, dynamic and prosperous, whole and unmutilated…rather than offering up scattered limbs, these dead limbs, duly labeled, for us to admire.” The colonial legacy of museums appears again, in another venue on the opposite coastline, in Isaac Julien’s mesmerizing five-channel video installation Once Again…(Statues Never Die) (2022). He remarks, “It’s better than ending up in a museum,” alluding to the rife history of Western institutions filled with dehumanizing displays of conquest and plunder. The restless spirit, who died fighting against the British during the 1819 siege of Al Dhayah fort in what is now the United Arab Emirates, gives his blessing. In Al Qasimi’s Um Al Dhabab (Mother of Fog), on view in Khorfakkan Art Centre near the eastern coast of the emirate of Sharjah, two young women endeavor to move a man’s remains before a hotel casino is built atop his burial site. A geographically sprawling biennial with venues along the coastlines of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, it largely manages to maintain thematic cohesion. Still, “Thinking Historically in the Present” is a remarkable feat and no small endeavor. Though the biennial is bolstered by some particularly strong pieces, it wavers from too light of a curatorial hand that often leaves artworks and artists siloed from, rather than in conversation with, each other. ![]() Elsewhere, however, it’s a curatorial absence that lingers. ![]() The work is made up of a collection of 100 books representing the breadth of Enwezor’s scholarly and curatorial contributions. Though the biennial was ultimately curated by Sharjah Art Foundation president and director Hoor Al Qasimi, Enwezor’s presence is still felt, specifically in Carrie Mae Weems’s touching installation The In Between (2022–23). “Do you see how the past is inescapable?” asks Farah Al Qasimi in her new film Um Al Dhabab (Mother of Fog) (2023), which fittingly debuted in the 15th edition of the Sharjah Biennial, “Thinking Historically in the Present.” On view through June 11th and featuring more than 150 artists working in a wide variety of media, this year’s biennial addresses overarching themes of personal and canonical history-making with artists speaking to concerns shaped by their own local politics.Ĭonceived by Okwui Enwezor before his death in 2019, “Thinking Historically in the Present” is the celebrated curator’s final project.
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