Three Singaporean artists show works at Sharjah Biennial 16

SHARJAH, United Arab Emirates – The Arab world’s biggest contemporary art event, Sharjah Biennial 16, kicked off with a ceremony at the city’s Al Mureijah Square on Feb 6.

The desert winter blessed Sharjah – the third-largest kingdom in the United Arab Emirates – with bright sunshine but cool temperatures for the opening, which had a large gathering of artists and international press.

There is a small but strong Singapore contingent, comprising artists Heman Chong, John Clang and Shubigi Rao.

Clang, better known as a photographer, ventures beyond the camera with a performance piece, Reading By An Artist, in which he creates “portraits” of people using the ancient Chinese divination method of ziwei doushu (purple star astrology). The 52-year-old will be conducting readings in a building in the heart of the old city.

He told The Straits Times: “This is my first biennial after many years of being an artist. I want to share my new practice with those who are curious.”

Chong’s Perimeter Walk (2013 to 2024), capturing aspects of his long walks through Singapore, is being shown in a restored building that was once a vegetable market. The 48-year-old said: “It’s always important for me to have an intimate connection with the receiver of my work. I’m hoping that whoever picks up one of my postcards will either live with it as an artwork on their fridge or maybe send it to someone they love. Nothing makes me happier than having my work develop a real function in the world that connects one person to another.”

Rao, 50, is showing These Petrified Paths (2023) at a restored ice factory building about a 90-minute drive from the city centre. Her mixed-media installation includes a feature-length film documenting the overlooked role of Armenian women in saving books.

Rao said her work also “examines the global geopolitics of oil not only as the reason for the abandonment of Armenia, but also as the underlying impetus behind so much injustice, conflict, cultural decimation and ecocide across the world”.

The Venice Biennale veteran added: “It’s especially meaningful for me to show a work here, about a community’s persistence, of women’s cultural labour, and the survival of Armenians facing an ongoing genocide.”

The Singaporeans are part of nearly 200 participants who have made more than 650 artworks for the biennial. The works are spread across 17 venues, spanning urban centres and rural communities.

There is a distinct South-east Asian flavour to 2025’s biennial as two of the co-curators have ties to the region. Ms Alia Swastika is Indonesian and director of the Biennale Jogja Foundation in Yogyakarta. London-based artist-curator Amal Khalaf is half Bahraini, half Singaporean.

The all-female curatorial team includes New Zealand’s Megan Tamati-Quennell, India’s Natasha Ginwala and Turkey’s Zeynep Oz. The diversity of curator and artist voices, including substantial representation from the global south, expands on the biennial’s theme “to carry”, which aims to explore questions about what people carry and how they carry it.