Project Description

In the late nineteenth century, trade cards – long used by merchants to advertise
their businesses – became what we today know as ‘trading cards’. Packaged with
products such as tobacco and gum, these cards typically featured sportsmen like
boxers and footballers. By the 20th century, these small cards – or in some cases,
stickers – were prized enough to be traded between collectors and saved in special
albums. Cabinet has appropriated this tradition, creating 64 trading cards featuring
prominent exemplars of four characters featured in the conceptual framework of
the Biennial, namely, the Trader, the Traitor, the Translator and the Experientialist.
Aspiring collectors can purchase these stickers at select shops throughout Sharjah
and collect them in an album featuring biographical sketches.

April 2011