Wharfage (Leaving Sharjah)

Artist Statement

A project on the creek in Sharjah, from where a large number of dhows leave for 'Somalia'. The project consists of two parallel works: a book, and a radio transmission from the port.

Somalia, a collection of semi-state entities, is also a kind of 'free trade zone' where formal tariffs and customs do not apply. This arrow of trade, in which the ship of Foucault's heterotopias is not an escape from but an entry into the space of conflict, is our subject. It offers a way to think about how 'business' and the spectral lives of these commodities are distinct from 'global capital'. With war up ahead, economic recession at its tail (and pirates in the middle), this movement of goods may trace old trade routes, but maps a contemporary landscape: used objects, a diaspora of Somali traders who cannot return, giant wooden ships, and urgency.


This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 9