The Revolution Will Be Curated: How Sharjah Biennial Redefined the Global Art Map

In the heart of the United Arab Emirates, far from the traditional centers of art world power, a quiet revolution has been unfolding for over two decades. The Sharjah Biennial, once a modest regional exhibition featuring national pavilions and conventional displays, has emerged as arguably the most radical reimagining of what an international art exhibition can be in the 21st century. Its transformation offers a blueprint for decolonizing cultural institutions and a glimpse of what a truly polycentric art world might look like.

The story of this transformation is inseparable from the vision of Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, who at 22 years old became the youngest director of a major international biennial. Fresh from the Slade School of Fine Art and inspired by Okwui Enwezor's groundbreaking 2002 documenta, Al Qasimi arrived at the 2003 Sharjah Biennial with ideas that would prove revolutionary. "Why country representation? Nobody's from one country!" she declared, immediately abolishing the national pavilion model that had defined the biennial's first five editions. Half the organizing committee quit in protest. What emerged from this creative destruction was something entirely new: a biennial that would prioritize artistic vision over national representation, critical engagement over cultural diplomacy.

The current 16th edition, titled "to carry," represents the culmination of this evolutionary journey. With five curators—Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Ginwala, and Zeynep Öz—working both collectively and independently, the biennial has embraced what it calls a "wild polyphony" of voices. This is not mere curatorial rhetoric but a fundamental restructuring of how major exhibitions are conceived and realized. The result is overwhelming in the best sense: over 650 works by nearly 200 artists spread across 17 venues, from the historic Al Mureijah Square to abandoned houses in the desert, from the iconic Flying Saucer building to the ghost village of Al Madam where sand has reclaimed human habitation.

What distinguishes Sharjah from other biennials is not just its scale but its methodology. The emphasis on commissioning new works—over 200 in this edition alone—represents a significant investment in artistic production rather than simply displaying existing pieces. This approach has created what Christine Tohmé, curator of the transformative 13th edition, calls "an infrastructure of possibility" for artists, particularly those from regions traditionally marginalized by the international art system. The biennial's commitment extends beyond the exhibition period through year-round programming, residencies, and educational initiatives that have made Sharjah a vital hub for artistic development in the region.

The prominence of Indigenous artists in the current edition—with significant representation from First Nations Australian artists, Native American creators, and Indigenous communities from across the Global South—reflects a curatorial approach that goes beyond tokenistic inclusion. Megan Tamati-Quennell, working from an Indigenous standpoint, has brought together projects that explore land, impermanence, and speculative futures through methodologies rooted in specific cultural practices. This isn't about translating Indigenous art for a global audience but creating spaces where different knowledge systems can coexist without hierarchy.

The biennial's relationship to its location is equally revolutionary. Unlike art events that treat their host cities as interchangeable backdrops, Sharjah Biennial has developed a profound engagement with its specific geography and history. The emirate's position—both geographic and cultural—as a meeting point between Asia, Africa, and the Arab world informs every aspect of the exhibition. Works respond to the desert landscape, the maritime heritage of the Gulf, the architectural legacy of modernization, and the complex demographics of a nation where expatriates constitute nearly 90% of the population.

This local specificity doesn't limit the biennial's global relevance—it amplifies it. By refusing to conform to Western exhibition models and instead developing approaches suited to its context, Sharjah has created new possibilities for how international art events can operate. The extension of the 13th edition to venues in Dakar, Istanbul, Ramallah, and Beirut demonstrated how a biennial could create networks of solidarity that bypass traditional art world circuits. This wasn't cultural imperialism in reverse but an attempt to create what Natasha Ginwala calls "new cartographies of exchange" based on shared histories and contemporary affinities rather than colonial pathways.

The institutional framework supporting the biennial is equally significant. The Sharjah Art Foundation, established by Al Qasimi in 2009, provides year-round infrastructure that many biennials lack. This isn't just about financial resources—though the foundation's budget, supported by government funding and Sharjah's ruler, allows for ambitious programming—but about creating sustainable relationships with artists and communities. The foundation's acquisition of works from the biennial for its permanent collection ensures that artistic production has a life beyond the exhibition, while its education programs have introduced contemporary art to generations of Emiratis who might otherwise have little exposure to such practices.

The question of audience is particularly fascinating in Sharjah's context. Unlike biennials in established art capitals that primarily serve an international art world elite, Sharjah must negotiate multiple publics: local Emiratis, the diverse expatriate communities that make up the majority of the population, regional visitors from across the Gulf, and the international art professionals who increasingly recognize the biennial as unmissable. This complexity has pushed curators to develop modes of presentation that don't assume a singular, educated art audience but instead create multiple entry points for engagement.

The 2025 edition's theme "to carry" resonates particularly in this context of multiplicity. What does it mean to carry culture, memory, and identity across borders? How do we carry the weight of history while imagining different futures? These questions feel urgent not just in the specific context of the Gulf—a region experiencing rapid transformation—but globally as we grapple with migration, climate change, and the collapse of old certainties. The biennial doesn't offer answers but creates spaces for these questions to be explored through artistic practice.

As Hoor Al Qasimi's appointment as artistic director of both the 2025 Aichi Triennale and the 2026 Biennale of Sydney demonstrates, the influence of Sharjah's model is spreading. But this isn't about exporting a formula—each context demands its own approach. What Sharjah offers is proof that there are alternatives to the dominant models of international exhibition-making, that it's possible to create platforms for art that serve their specific contexts while contributing to global conversations. In an art world still largely structured by colonial legacies and market imperatives, this represents a genuine revolution—one measured not in overthrown systems but in new possibilities made real.