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 assemblage is rooted in his memories of the Sierpe mangrove forest in Costa Rica. Jessica Ekomane and Ntshepe Tsekere Bopape present sonic performances set against Sharjah's diverse landscapes.

Present Uneven, a film programme curated by Harutyunyan and Tevž Logar, concludes the opening week with video works exploring how past political imaginaries persist, transform and resurface.