Sharjah Biennial puts women in the picture

Artworks address women's place in society, and UAE's natural landscape.

Ebtisam Abdulaziz with her Women's Circles work.

SHARJAH // A series of photos depicting an artist's view of the position of women in society and dozens of coloured landscapes drawn during a trip with a donkey and a dog are flying the flag for Emirati art at the Arab world's largest cultural event.

"Women's Circles", by Ebtisam Abdulaziz of Sharjah, consists of 20 pictures of a woman in black posing in various positions with a white circle and is on show at the Sharjah Biennial.

Also on display at Sharjah Art Museum is "Camar Cande's Journey" by her fellow Emirati Abdullah al Saadi, who is from Khor Fakkan but lives across the Omani border in Madha, Musandam.

He spent 20 days travelling on foot and by boat, recording the landscape and coastline in his drawings.

Abdulaziz hired a ballerina to pose for her striking black-and-white photos. She originally posed for some of the shots herself, but decided in the end to use only the ones featuring the ballerina.

The circle, according to the Biennial guidebook, "serves as both a prop for the artist and a metaphor for the condition of women within a set of activities and values that are clearly circumscribed".

Abdulaziz said: "I am a woman and I'm an artist and I think every woman has her own issues that are related to society, everything you are suffering from, that kind of squeezes us or puts us in a circle, in a way.

"We're not getting our freedom as we wish to, so that's the main idea.

"Even in the West there are some women who are suffering from a lot of issues.

"That's why I didn't want the outfit to look like the Emirati abaya, because I wanted to talk about every single woman. The woman in the pictures is covered because I don't want to show the face, I don't want to distract the audience when I'm talking to them about the woman as a human being.

"Some artists talk about a woman as a sexual object and I'm against that. This is one of our challenges, that sometimes they look at us as a sexual object, that's why I tried to cover the woman and not show her figure."

She digitally edited the images to create the effect she wanted.

"I did that to make it very minimal and abstract so that people would just focus on the body and the circle, which is representative of the issues of the woman."

Al Saadi's exhibit is named after his donkey, Camar Cande ("White Sugar"). He passed through parts of Sharjah and Fujairah before entering Musandam, and ended up at Khasab, the Omani enclave's main town.

"We went for 20 days and I was doing some landscapes, and in the future I'll publish a book about this trip," he said.

A friend followed him in a car carrying food and other supplies. "I didn't ride the donkey, we were all - me, the donkey and the dog - walking together."

Though only two Emiratis are represented at this year's Biennial - the 10th - many UAE artists have taken part in the past.

Both Abdulaziz and al Saadi have had their work exhibited before, and their contributions this year were commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation, which runs the show.

The event is seen as giving Emiratis a platform and an opportunity to find the means and technical know-how to produce new work.

Other works on show have UAE-related content.

Egyptian Anna Boghiguian's installation, "The Simple Affair that Moved the World", is concerned with migration and explores the economic, political and intellectual links between her home country, the UAE, the US and India.

The US artists Alexis Bhagat and Lize Mogel collaborated in a project that involved travelling around malls and other public areas in Sharjah with a mobile kiosk called the Sharjah InfoCart.

They asked people about the places that were important to them, and the information they gathered was used to produce the "Sharjah CityMap", of which the Biennial guidebook says: "Unlike tourist maps, the CityMap reflects the complex experiences of people in Sharjah."

"The New Emirati Britannica" is an exhibit by Lynn Love and Ann Sappenfield from New York, inspired by the classic 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Pearls of the Gulf: Dubai 1975 is a remarkable documentary shot in colour by Iranian Kamran Shirdel, regarded as the father of social documentary cinema in his country.

It was produced at a key point in the city's development, and memorable scenes include one of Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed, the late ruler of Dubai, sitting on the steps of Zabeel Palace waiting to receive petitioners.

Rayyane Tabet from Lebanon has produced a work called "Home on Neutral Ground: a project in three parts", which focuses on the donation last year of Sharjah Cricket Stadium to Afghanistan to serve as the country's home ground. It includes a 24-hour video showing the interior of the stadium that was shot and is screened in real time.

And Ziad Antar, also from Lebanon, has contributed a black-and-white silver print of the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa.

The Sharjah Biennial continues until May 16.