Across the Gulf, the malleable sand bears witness to cycles of construction and redevelopment as solar pressure catalyses decades of futuristic mega-projects to ‘green’ the arid terrain. The motifs of the sun and its intense heat as well as the sand and its pervasive orange hue often serve to represent and condense the Gulf’s complex ecologies and aspirations.

Of Land and Water: Works from the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection brings together selections that offer different perspectives on our association with and relationship to land, water and homeland.

In its inaugural exhibition, the Photography Gallery presents a panorama of artistic experimentation and engagement through the medium of photography. Drawn from the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection, the works navigate the sociopolitical terrain of the last six decades against a backdrop of the compressed, and often fissured, processes of modernisation and decolonisation.

Comprising 165 photographs and archival documents from the collection of His Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Member of the Federal Supreme Council of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Sharjah, this exhibition serves as a starting point for research into how photography translates and interprets history.