There are two, perhaps more, ways that Sharjah Biennial 16 can be approached under the title to carry. The first is an inspection of the collected histories, burdens, memories and possibilities. The second is an invitation to be carried toward sites of wander and wonder where rest results in reinvention. Is it what we carry or where we can be carried? Curated by Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Ginwala and Zeynep Öz, Sharjah Biennial 16 features works by more than 190 participants, including over 200 new commissions, which will be presented across the Emirate of Sharjah. In conversation with Alia Swastika, FNB Art Joburg learns more about the curatorial collective’s process of embracing both.
How does carrying manifest as an artistic method, as a gesture of solidarity, as an ancestral practice? How do artists and curators work through the tensions between precarity and endurance, between individual expression and collective vision? Across intergenerational stories, feminist epistemologies, and new commissions, Sharjah Biennial becomes a site for holding space—for tenderness and rage, for ritual and rupture, for listening and remembering. To expand on this, curator, researcher and writer Alia Swastika explains her position as a practitioner whose practice has, over the last ten years, focused on issues and perspectives of decoloniality and feminism.
The Biennial’s title, to carry, reflects a broad spectrum of ideas. How do you interpret the concept of “carrying” in the context of the cultural, historical, and political landscapes of the artists involved?
We believe that “carrying” is about offering something, bringing something, from outside to inside, and vice versa. So each artist contributes and carries diverse social political contexts that are articulated in different languages, even though each curator doesn’t really represent one geographical background, but I think we feel connections and understanding with particular region (for example me working in Southeast Asia), that making the process became so rich and fascinating for every of us.
In your curatorial approach, how do you see the relationship between precarity and resilience as it relates to the notion of what we carry when we move, remain, or survive?
I think the role of curatorial work today is not necessarily selecting the best artists or best practices anymore, but more weaving narratives and the acts of care and sharing. So many of the projects I propose here also based on the space of sharing the narratives of surviving from many difficult situations from the conflicts, genocides, wars, or losing lands and homes. There are many stories of resilience of moving, migrating, building new life, of losing and griefing. These acts to reach and to bring these narratives beyond the form for me become the gesture of solidarity. Biennale becomes a platform to ensure that we listen, we care and we are there for each other.
Can you elaborate on how the theme “to carry” intersects with the ongoing conversations about migration, displacement, and the preservation of cultural memory?
First we learnt from long time how sharjah becomes home from people from many parts of the world, it is a place of tense mobility and migration. Also the notion of borderless world (which is very biased from the experience of the first world mobility), always need to be reexamined and reinvestigate within the discourse of power relations. So the story of migration and displacement here really much coming from the global south with the burden history of slavery, colonization, trafficking, refugee, that had shaped the cultural identity and collective memory itself. We carry how personal and family histories intersects with larger political narratives, how the acts of holding collective identity evolves in various rituals, traditions, songs and poetry, local crafts, and many others.
The Biennial emphasizes collaboration between curators and artists. Could you tell me more about how you navigate balancing individual artistic voices with the collective vision of the Biennial?
There is always sense of individuality when you work in colllective ways; since collectivity is about bringing different individual voices together. So with a organic proses of sharing and listening/understanding, this invidual subjectivity is core for communal meaning. So for me this marks the shifting of collectivity as a method instead as a form, where we might work and collaborate together between individuals without having the burden of creating a collective. Artists also collaborates with many different social groups, students, mothers, scientists, workers, and many more. Its interwoven subjectivities are the beauty of all these collaborative processes.
In terms of community-building, how do you envision the role of art and artists in holding space for tenderness, rage, and transformation in response to societal challenges (especially in the context of a biennial)
I am lucky to witness the working process on how arts and artists create a possibility of a future and hope. In many of research or collaborative process artists consistenly showing me their beautiful yet unpredicted mind, that opens up to many layers of forgotten his(her)stories, and subtly build the bridges of many disconnected positionalities. I think artists entering space and social arena with honesty, and this emerges power to transfer, because it leads to strong and trusty bonding, aside of political agenda.
6. You mentioned the term ‘Rosestrata’ in your commentary. How does this concept play a role in the curatorial process, and what can it offer contemporary practices of translation in art?
I think rosestrata comes a bit later after the curatorial process almost towards the end; so its not really guidance, but like the metaphor that I found represent many of the projects developed by the artists I am working with. While I am interested to dig into this notion of ancestral knowledge—many of them are held of manifested in women’s embodied activities—I also see how the knowledge can be seen as a journey of crossing time borders of the past and future, including our connection to technology. Rosetrata I think reach out to many aspects of this narrative, to “translate” various contexts of knowledge, epistemology and cosmological beliefs, that being held as a collective actions and movements.
7. How do you see the intersection of feminist epistemologies and artistic practices within the Biennial, especially in relation to the maternal knowledge and cosmic order discussed in ‘Rosestrata’?
In many of our working process with the artists, I was in awe with all the power of women in many different conditions that showed the spirits of resistance and resilience. We also see how the practice of making (arts) in many of indigenous communities is going beyond individual expression; it is a way of preserving their beliefs, knowledge and collective memories, that often times deal with the process of healing of communal trauma. Many projects in the biennial dedicates to the efforts to stage to those women who were ignored, have no space to speak, or just abandoned in our formal history; I think it is important for a biennial to be a platform to tell stories of these inspiring resistance but also artistic practices, that in the western system not so much considered as “art”.
8. The Biennial encompasses intergenerational stories. What insights can be drawn from this exchange so far?
This is I think one of most critical aspects in the biennial. I have many projects that showing how intergenerational relationships are an urgency of transmitting embodied knowledhe and sharing diverse experiences. In Mangku Muriati and Citra Sasmita’s collaboration, their research on particular figure such as Dewa Istri Kanya, had shown unique interpretations coming from the different situations they came from, including different perspectives coming from their time period when they grown. This also can be seen in the project that shows together Marwan Kassab Bagchi and Muhammed Hawajri, who also developed relationship as mentor and student, who then shared lots of wisdom and strength in midst difficult situation as artist.
How do you balance the urgency of contemporary issues with the long-term vision of art’s role in societal change within the Biennial framework?
Artists are always very visionary. Thus when you discuss contemporary issues with artists, they bring you to fly across the times and think of speculative future. I believe that is the special thing about artists. What is happening today can be fold into narrative of the past or to be the imagination of future. When they tells stories, there is always sense of longer term of engagements. And this imagination and long engagements encourage the changes.
In what ways does the Biennial seurve as a space for technological and ritualistic explorations, particularly in relation to the theme of ‘carrying’ change and transformation?
Many artists try to explore with technology more than its position as medium or theme. There are explorations where they tackle technology as approach and collaborator, but to critically think of human relationship with machine and technology. The work of Pratchaya Phinthong and Rully Shabara, for example, juxtapose technology and ancient cultures in relationship of knowledge and formation of history, from stone as representation of human’s articulative visions to the shifts of symbolic epistemology uses many different technologies.
You’ve spoken about fostering dialogue across translocal, transnational, and transgenerational lines. How do you ensure that this dialogue is not only inclusive but also reflective of the diverse global contexts represented in the Biennial?
Across hundreds of works in the Biennial visitors can feel of all these connections; the womanifesto clearlh bring together all these aspects and this has been great inspiration for me. During research process, there are so many knowledge transmission from older generation of indigenous knowledge holders to the younger people, which is very important for me, since this not only thinking knowledge not only in relation to mind, but also soul.
The Biennial is presenting over 200 new commissions. How did you approach the process of commissioning new works, and what kind of support and resources were provided to ensure these projects evolve in ways that resonate with the overarching theme?
For me, as curator we work together to develop the project in shared vision or goal, so in many of the projects i really much involve with the research process, or making sure how we have the correct ethical process of working with different communities, and care and listen to each other. It is more about about these moments of inter-connected and togetherness.