Sharjah Art Foundation sets new dates for Sharjah Biennial and March Meeting

The March Meeting is now slated to take place in 2021, whereas the Biennial will take place in March 2022.

Curator and art critic, the late Okwui Enwezor, envisioned the theme for the next Sharjah Biennial, which will now take place in March 2022. Getty Images

The Sharjah Art Foundation has postponed its March Meeting until next year, and announced that the next iteration of the Sharjah Biennial is scheduled to take place in March 2022.

The March Meeting – an annual three-day programme that brings together art experts to discuss issues in contemporary arts – was slated to take place from March 21 to 23 this year, but was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The foundation has announced that the next meeting will take place in March 2021.

Titled Unravelling the Present, the 2021 March Meeting, which coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Sharjah Biennale, will explore the evolution of the Biennial in its efforts to break away from traditional modes of curating and displaying art.

The meeting, which will be free and open to the public, is part of the 15th Sharjah Biennial. It is set to reflect on past events, while considering the future of the biennial model.

The upcoming Sharjah Biennial – now scheduled to take place in 2022 – will be held under the theme, Thinking Historically in the Present, which was conceived by the late Okwui Enwezor.

In Enwezor's plans for the event, which he began developing in 2018 – the year before his death – he said that the Sharjah Biennial can be perceived not only as a platform for confronting with the disruptive force of artistic monolingualism, but can also provide a space for thinking historically in the present.