Today I spent a marvellous morning catching up on the many art exhibitions currently on show in Sharjah. The emirate and, more particularly the Sharjah Art Foundation and the Sharjah Museums Department, never fail to astound me with the quality of the art they put on. The buildings too are in immaculate shape; with the recently renovated Bait Al Serkal, that houses Farideh Lashai’s simply wonderful retrospective, a case in point.
I was pleased to find several more public visitors than I have seen in previous years, as I wandered the world-class exhibitions in the direct vicinity of the Sharjah Art Foundation’s head office.
There was the aforementioned Lashai show, which is so mammoth you need a good chunk of time to get round and explore every corner of the superbly curated show – all credit goes to SAF’s founder and president Sheikha Hoor al Qasimi for that.
Then, in the courtyard of Beit al Serkal, there is the Do It, exhibition, featuring fun and interactive works from some of the region’s most important artists. Encouraging the public to completely take part in the work, the show features direction such as “whistle your favourite song” (from Raed Yassin) or “draw a sketch” (from Nasir Nasrallah). Abdulnasser Gharem also directs you to make an ink stamp on a large paper and Rayanne Tabet asks you to write numbers on the wall. It is co curated by Sheikha Hoor and Hans Ulrich Obrist from the Serpentine and is a great way to get all generations involved in art.
Finally, I went to the Angela Bulloch and Maria Zerres show in the Sharjah Art Museum. Bulloch is a very well known British/Canadian artist who lives in Germany; her work explores, light, sound, shape, architecture and form. Zerres is a German painter who was picks apart the genre of abstraction.
It is a fabulous collection of both artists’ work curated under the theme of entropy and uniting the artists in terms of their line of questioning. Considering Dynamics & the Forms of Chaos is the first time either artist has shown in the region and is a must see. One of the best things about it is the long and informative wall text, so even if you know nothing about the work, you can come away feeling as if you have learned something.
I spent all morning there and I didn’t even get to the SAF Art Spaces, which also have many stunning shows. Sharjah, I will be back.
aseaman@thenational.ae