Education and public programmes are the twin pillars upholding the central role that art can play in the life of a community by promoting public learning and a participatory approach to art, and encouraging creativity.
Since 2009, the Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) has built on the history of cultural collaboration and exchange that began with the first Sharjah Biennial in 1993.
Funded by the Department of Culture and Information, Government of Sharjah, the SAF works with local and international partners. It creates opportunities for artists and artistic production through its core initiatives that include the Sharjah Biennial, the annual March Meeting, residencies, production grants, commissions, exhibitions, research, publications and a growing collection.
Every year, the SAF strives to bring a range of contemporary art and cultural programmes to the communities of Sharjah, the UAE and the region.
This year too has been a stellar event-filled calendar. The summer programme at the SAF ended on a high note recently with “Vantage Point Sharjah 3”, the third iteration of its annual photographic exhibition, an initiative focused on public programming and community outreach. Photographs have been selected from applications to an Open Call inviting all residents in the UAE to participate.
Shaikha Hoor Al Qasimi, president of the SAF, who selected the participants following the open call announced in June, said: “This year we invited photographers to submit works on the theme of photography and received a large number of entries from photographers, artists and students. ‘Vantage Point Sharjah 3’ presented a broad selection of works. The aim of the programme was to foster the development of local photographers and encourage engagement with the cultural community in the Emirates.”
A new open call for submissions for Vantage Point will be announced next summer.
The Education Programme at SAF offers classes, workshops, lectures and activities for participants of all ages and abilities.
Light Show
The SAF’s autumn programme that kicks off from this month will include the dazzling “Light Show” exhibition originally organised by London’s Hayward Gallery.
“Light Show” explores the experiential and phenomenal aspects of light by bringing together sculptures and installations that use light to sculpt and shape space in different ways. The exhibition showcases artworks created from the 1960s to the present day, including immersive environments, free-standing light sculptures and projections.
From atmospheric installations to intangible sculptures that you can move around — and even through — visitors can experience light in all of its spatial and sensory forms. Individual artworks explore different aspects of light, such as colour, duration, intensity and projection, as well as perceptual phenomena. They also use light to address architecture, science and film, and do so using a variety of lighting technologies.
One of the Hayward Gallery’s most popular exhibitions, “Light Show” was visited by more than 190,000 people in 2013 before travelling to Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia. The exhibition was curated by Dr Cliff Lauson of Hayward Gallery.
The exhibition will include works by David Batchelor, Jim Campell, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Bill Culbert, Olafur Eliasson, Dan Flavin, Ceal Floyer, Nancy Holt, Jenny Holzer, Ann Veronica Janssens, Brigitte Kowanz, Anthony McCall, François Morellet, Iván Navarro, Katie Paterson, Conrad Shawcross, James Turrell, Leo Villareal and Cerith Wyn Evans.
“Light Show” will open on September 19 and is organised by the Hayward Gallery, London, in association with the SAF. It will run until December 5 at SAF Art Spaces, Sharjah.
March Project
The March Project is an annual educational residency programme for young artists and provides opportunities to research, realise and present site-specific works through a series of site visits, work experience and seminars in Sharjah.
Participants include recent graduates from Slade School of Fine Art (UK), American University of Beirut (Lebanon), Malmö Art Academy (Sweden), The University of Massachusetts, Amherst (USA), Higher Colleges of Technology (UAE) and Zayed University (UAE).
Participants in this second March Project are Balqis Al Rashed, Nour Bishouty, Majd Abdel Hamid, Matthew Copson, Matthew Peers, Maysoon Al Ali, Mona Al Beiti and Sholto Dobie.
The participants are mentored by select artists and curators who have been helping them contextualise their proposals and final works.
The works that will be realised in this exhibition in October draw upon the role of social interactions, urbanism, space and sound in the hybrid culture and society of Sharjah.
The March Project exhibition will run at different locations in SAF Art Spaces and the Arts Area, Sharjah, from October 31, 2015 to January 31, 2016.
The Egyptian Surrealists in Global Perspective
In collaboration with the Institute for Comparative Modernities at Cornell University and the Visual Cultures Program at the American University in Cairo (AUC), the SAF will organise an international conference entitled The Egyptian Surrealists in Global Perspective, from November 26 to 28.
Focusing on the history and the evolution of the Egyptian Surrealist group and their relationship with their Western and international counterparts, this project will document one of the most interesting chapters of Modernism in the late 1930s up to the early 1960s, highlighting the multifaceted aspects of modernity and its global interconnectedness in the 20th century.
The conference will be followed by a travelling exhibition entitled “When Arts Become Liberty: The Egyptian Surrealists (1938-1965)”, to be inaugurated at the SAF in 2017, followed by an exhibition in Cairo, Egypt.
A two-volume publication will follow the conference with the first to accompany the exhibition and the second to serve as the catalogue of the proposed exhibition.
The conference and curatorial team include Hoor Al Qasimi (SAF), Salah M. Hassan (Cornell University, USA), Bahia Shehab (AUC), Ehab Ellabban (Ofok Gallery, Cairo), Nagla Samir (AUC) and Lydie Diakhate (Paris).
The Egyptian Surrealists in Global Perspective will be held from November 26 to 28 at AUC.
Film Programme
“The Salt of the Earth”, directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, will be the opening film this season on September 19. From then on, there will be screenings every two weeks at Mirage City Cinema, located in SAF Art Spaces.
The UAE audiences can enjoy a wide range of films and genres featured in the regularly scheduled screenings.
Made in 2014, “The Salt of the Earth” is about photographer Sebastião Salgado’s four decades of travel through continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history, international conflicts, starvation and exodus ... He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes: a huge photographic project that is a tribute to the planet’s beauty.
Salgado’s life and work are revealed to us by his son Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wenders, a photographer himself.
Duration: 110 minutes
Language: French, Portuguese, English with English and Arabic subtitles
Production Programme Open Call
The SAF Production Programme broadens the possibilities for the production of art in the MENASA region through a commitment to support innovation and excellence in artistic practice by encouraging risk and experimentation.
This commitment places artists at the core of the Foundation’s mission by offering grants and professional support for the realisation of projects selected from an open call for proposals.
The open call for the 2016 production programme will be announced in October.
N.P. Krishna Kumar is a freelance journalist based in Dubai.
