Popis: |
In an empty courtyard surrounded by stone walls, visitors made their way around stagnant pools of water, drawn toward brightly colored panels set into the back wall of the space. The sounds of birds and bubbling water surrounded them. Suddenly, a dead palm tree at the center of the courtyard spoke with a woman’s voice, telling the visitor about her slow death from loss of nutrients; the voice mourned not only life, but love, explaining that her lover drained her of existence. This mixed-media work, Aging Ruins Dreaming Only to Recall the Hard Chisel from the Past (2019), was a collaboration between the Nigerian artists Otobong Nkanga and Emeka Ogboh and won the 2019 Sharjah Biennial Prize. Haunting and evocative in its own right, the work also reflects many of the themes addressed by artists throughout this biennial: the passage of time, loss, displacement, memory. According to Hoor Al Qasimi, the director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, this edition of the Sharjah Biennial sought to leave behind the “echo chamber” of mainstream media, with its closed feedback loops, and to “offer opportunities to closely examine how stories are told and from what perspectives they are communicated and historicized.”1 The 14th Sharjah Biennial took the somewhat unusual approach of inviting three curators—Zoe Butt, Omar Kholeif, and Claire Tancons—to each shape their own section of the exhibition, a strategy that at times resulted in a lack of cohesion between approaches, even when individual works within the sections were strong [Image 1]. IMAGE 1. Installation view of Aging Ruins Dreaming Only to Recall the Hard Chisel from the Past (2019) by Otobong Nkanga and Emeka Ogboh; courtesy the artists and Sharjah Art Foundation. In “Journey Beyond the Arrow,” the section of the Biennial curated by Butt, the selected works were meant to … |