Published on 28 September 2026
Sharjah Biennial 17: What remains, sits restive
21 January–13 June 2027 | Opening week programme: 21–24 January 2027
Sharjah, Al Dhaid, Kalba and Khorfakkan
To register for the opening week programme, click here.
Sharjah Art Foundation is pleased to announce further details of the 17th edition of Sharjah Biennial (SB17) and the dates for March Meeting 2027. Curated by Angela Harutyunyan and Paula Nascimento, the Biennial convenes under the theme What remains, sits restive. Proposing to engage with the complexity of our times through unresolved pasts, SB17 will take place from 21 January to 13 June 2027 in 11 venues across the Emirate of Sharjah.
The Biennial’s opening week programme, slated from 21 to 24 January, unfolds across four cities: Sharjah, Al Dhaid, Kalba and Khorfakkan. Each day will feature exhibition tours, performances, activations and screenings.
Highlights of the opening week programme include Ângela Ferreira’s intervention into a 1970s cinema—a node upon which various postcolonial geographies, histories and aesthetics converge—asking what happens when architecture travels; Cynthia Zaven’s performance revives a lost tradition of women’s sea songs in the Arab Gulf, some sung by women as an expression of collective grief, others reaffirming the role of women left behind.
Composed of sound-generating sculptures, Christian Salablanca Díaz’s assemblage is rooted in his memories of boat trips with his father along the Sierpe mangrove forest on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. Jessica Ekomane and Ntshepe Tsekere Bopape will both present sonic performances set in the diverse landscapes of Sharjah.
The opening week will conclude with Present Uneven, a film programme curated by Angela Harutyunyan and Tevž Logar, featuring video works that explore how past aspirations and political imaginaries persist, transform and resurface.
Venues
Sharjah: Arts Square, Calligraphy Square, Al Mureijah Square, Photography Gallery, The Flying Saucer, Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilisation
Al Dhaid: Al Dhaid Art Centre, Arts Palace and Farm
Kalba: Kalba Ice Factory
Khorfakkan: Khorfakkan Hall, Khorfakkan Cinema
March Meeting: 19–21 March 2027
The 18th edition of March Meeting takes place from 19 to 21 March 2027, offering discursive sessions that expand the Biennial’s curatorial concept and artistic inquiries. The programme includes commissioned performances by Biennial participants.
Through his solo multimedia performance, Victor Gama recirculates Augusto Zita N’Gonguenho’s legacy by weaving the anthropologist’s handwritten insights with southern African polyrhythms, electronic music and contemporary compositions. Wendy Morris’s procession travels towards the breakwater at dusk, while singing a lament to the Arabian Gulf—known as the ‘bitter sea’ in some ancient civilisations. Hassan Khan performs his recent songs and hip-hop tracks written in response to our turbulent times.
During the three-day March Meeting, tours to the Biennial are offered every evening, along with a free bus tour to the central and eastern regions on 18 March 2027.
Our present is troubled by what remains of unlived pasts, of the defeated yet undead projects of a modernity premised on universal emancipation. Rather than passive and dormant, these remainders continue to animate the present with their restive rhythms, shaping the politics of time and space. Histories resurface and endure, not as pure recurrence but as residues and morphed processes actively informing the now.
Grounded in this common theme, Sharjah Biennial 17: What remains, sits restive brings together two different approaches, each articulated by one of the two curators: Angela Harutyunyan and Paula Nascimento.
Angela Harutyunyan traces the various afterlives of socialist modernity, as observed from the peripheries of modernisation and anti-colonial struggles. Can art confront the hard-shell of late capitalist alienation by activating what remains of these emancipatory projects? Harutyunyan’s presentation brings together 55 participants who engage with this question to produce deeper insights into the means and forms of representation for a reality replete with contradictions.
The present moment has been shaped not only by these spectres of unlived pasts, but also by the slow violences of cultural silencing and oppression. The 54 participants invited by Paula Nascimento use infrastructure as a method to explore how place and memory intersect in both tangible and intangible ways, proposing new vocabularies to help us navigate the intricacy of our times.
Sharjah Art Foundation is an advocate, catalyst and producer of contemporary art within the Emirate of Sharjah and the surrounding region, in dialogue with the international arts community. The Foundation advances an experimental and wide-ranging programmatic model that supports the production and presentation of contemporary art, preserves and celebrates the distinct culture of the region and encourages a shared understanding of the transformational role of art. The Foundation’s core initiatives include the long-running Sharjah Biennial, featuring contemporary artists from around the world; the annual March Meeting, a convening of international arts professionals and artists; grants and residencies for artists, curators and cultural producers; ambitious and experimental commissions and a range of travelling exhibitions and scholarly publications.
Established in 2009 to expand programmes beyond the Sharjah Biennial, which launched in 1993, the Foundation is a critical resource for artists and cultural organisations in the Gulf and a conduit for local, regional and international developments in contemporary art. The Foundation’s deep commitment to developing and sustaining the cultural life and heritage of Sharjah is reflected through year-round exhibitions, performances, screenings and educational programmes in the city of Sharjah and across the Emirate, often hosted in historic buildings that have been repurposed as cultural and community centres. A growing collection reflects the Foundation’s support of contemporary artists in the realisation of new work and its recognition of the contributions made by pioneering modern artists from the region and around the world.
Sharjah Art Foundation is a legally independent public body established by Emiri Decree and supported by government funding, grants from national and international nonprofits and cultural organisations, corporate sponsors and individual patrons. Hoor Al Qasimi serves as President and Director. All exhibitions are free and open to the public.
Sharjah is the third largest of the seven United Arab Emirates and the only one bridging the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Reflecting the deep commitment to the arts, architectural preservation and cultural education embraced by its ruler, Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Sharjah is home to more than 20 museums and has long been known as the cultural hub of the United Arab Emirates. In 1998, it was named UNESCO's 'Arab Capital of Culture' and has been designated the UNESCO ‘World Book Capital’ for the year 2019.
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