Current and Upcoming Exhibitions in Sharjah
Exhibition spaces in Sharjah opened recently, following strict COVID-19 guidelines and precautions.
The good thing, especially now, these exhibition spaces aren’t normally crowded, so if you are in or near Sharjah and craving to visit art exhibitions where you can meander around undisturbed, here’s a list of current and upcoming exhibitions.
All are free to attend, but you will need to book your visit in advance. I’ve included the relevant links for each exhibition.
Current exhibitions
Homebound: A Journey in Photography
Dates: 24 June—31 October 2020
Location: Sharjah Art Museum
Water Life: Knowing the way Tomorrow, © Aïda Mulune, 2018
A collaboration between The Africa Institute, Sharjah Art Foundation and the Sharjah Museums Authority, Homebound: A Journey in Photography is a two-part exhibition about the work and career of acclaimed artist and photographer Aïda Muluneh. Part of The Africa Institute’s Ethiopia season, this exhibition is the first presentation of Muluneh’s work in Sharjah.
Art in the Age of Anxiety
Dates: 26 June—26 September 2020
Location: Gallery 1, 2 & 3, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah
Art in the Age of Anxiety, 2020. Installation view: Sharjah Art Foundation. Photo: Danko Stjepanovic
Art in the Age of Anxiety brings together a global group of contemporary artists to explore the ways everyday devices, technologies and digital networks have altered our collective consciousness. The exhibition presents more than 60 works spanning sculpture, prints, video, virtual reality, robotics and algorithmic programs developed by more than 30 international artists.
Curated by Omar Kholeif, the exhibition conjures the bombardment of information, misinformation, emotion, deception and secrecy that invades online and offline life in the age of digital technology. It aims to illuminate the “post-digital” condition—the manners and behaviours found in a world altered by the rise of digital technologies—and posits speculations for our future.
Vantage Point Sharjah 8
Dates: 29 August—28 November 2020
Location: Al Hamriyah Studios, Al Hamriyah, Sharjah
MEAT MARKET, Gianluigi Guercia, 2018, Digital print; 42 x 29.7 cm.
The exhibition features a significant selection of unique photographs that tell important stories of personal experience and community life. Adopting a variety of approaches, such as collages, analogue photography and digital manipulation, the participating photographers have reflected on scenes of the human condition, captured landscapes and nature, and imagined futuristic scenarios.
Upcoming Exhibitions
Tarek Atoui: Cycles in 11
Dates: 19 September 2020 — 10 April 2021
Location: Bait Al Serkal, Arts Square, Sharjah
The works in the exhibition, developed over the last 11 years, represent the culmination of the artist’s ongoing exploration of different methods of listening, composition and performance. The instruments Atoui has created are the product of extensive research into music history and tradition as well as collaborations with different experts. Challenging established ways of listening through innovative approaches to sound, the instruments also build on the artist’s earlier project WITHIN, which grew out of years of work with Deaf culture. This project, originating in Sharjah, investigated how deafness can influence the way sound performance, space and instrumentation are understood.
Lindsay Seers and Keith Sargent: Nowhere Less Now³ [flying saucer]
Dates: 26 September—26 December 2020
Location: The Flying Saucer, Sharjah
Nowhere Less Now is an episodic work that addresses the dark legacy of British colonialism and Lindsay Seers’ journey through history in search of (the) truth. Presented in cycles, it is conceptually structured around Henri Bergson's philosophy of memory. Seers builds on Bergson's complex proposition of 'intuition as practice' to develop a specific method for the act of filming. Formed from his three fundamental propositions for asking the right creative question, Seers’ method is based on reenactment and evocations that are created to reveal qualitative relationships between things. These connections, which may be conceptual, historical or visual, emerge as she travels to various locations. The resulting installation has a multitude of narrative streams and a collage of imagery as time (past, present, future) is compacted.
Zarina Bhimji: Black Pocket
Dates: 2 October 2020—10 April 2021
Location: Galleries 4, 5 & 6, Al Mureijah Art Spaces, Sharjah
Yellow Patch, © Zarina Bhimji, 2011, Single screen installation; 35mm colour film, HD transfer with Dolby 5.1 surround sound, 29 min 43 sec. All Rights Reserved, DACS/Artimage 2020
For over thirty years, Zarina Bhimji’s work has staged enquiry into image, object, sound and language, searching for the universal in both its literal and abstract manifestations.
This major survey organised by Sharjah Art Foundation presents a number of the artist’s seminal works across film, photography and installation. The exhibition features the artist’s early exploration into forms of knowledge overlooked by established systems of order as well as her later exploration of architecture and landscape as arbiters of complex experience and emotion.
Each project, embarked upon after meticulous research and recce trips spanning weeks at a time, sees Bhimji sympathetically inhabit sites via her practice: every location becomes an open-air studio, cleared of political or historic specificity.