This dialogue is inspired by Yuko Hasegawa’s proposal of the courtyard as one of the ways for conceptualising the layout for Sharjah Biennial 11. In this publication project the Biennial, Geeta Kapur and Kavita Singh discuss how the courtyard has existed as a place for multiple narrative possibilities.

The result of their conversation is a reverie on courtyards as a place for spatial transpositions, the physical manifestation of imperial power and control, eroticism, the gendering of space and its role in the process of acculturation over periods of European conquest and colonialism.