How Natasha Ginwala curated the Sharjah Biennial

The curator speaks on artistic lineage and a refusal to turn away

27 May 2025

It’s about time the gaze of art shifted towards the Global South. Sharjah Biennial’s 16th Edition navigates the inherited knowledge and cultural milieu of distinct narratives that shape it. The Biennial’s multivocal framework engages over 200 new commissions and nearly 200 participants.

We speak to Natasha Ginwala, a curator at the biennial, to understand what informed her vision. Natasha delves into the curatorial ethos, interdisciplinary dialogue and political urgencies that shape to carry and its evolving extensions.

What is the focus and meaning behind the title to carry?

We arrived at the title to carry as an active gesture. It pursues doing rather than postulating, and yet remains open to a propositional mode. We are reflecting on forms of inheritance, lineage and marking presence — the knowledge, values and practices held within creative individuals and communities and a collective need to shed the tyrannical rules of broken systems. How do we reconcile the inequities of this moment? While holding space for both tenderness and rage, how may we continue to correspond with deep pasts and rhythms of futurity? to carry approaches biennial-making as a collective wayfinding. Amid tides of annihilation, it is a modality of sense-making and insistent looking back, inwards and across, instead of turning away.

Decades ago, James Baldwin reflected, “I’m terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart, which is happening in my country. These people have deluded themselves for so long that they really don’t think I’m human.” The artistic processes, performances and sonic offerings across venues convene forms of remembrance, Indigenous knowledges and communal learning, the radiance of love, caregiving and mourning, the braiding of kinship and lament as swelling currents mobilising against the atomisation of self and world.

How did the collective curating process unfold for this edition?

I’ve been working in collective formations for biennial-making for some time now, so there is a familiarity with pathways to conceive and materialise large exhibitions in a group. We each had autonomy over the artists we wished to engage with and led on specific projects. As we had never worked together before and some of us were even meeting for the first time in person it was crucial to have time to develop a common vision, while also maintaining the freedom to compose chapters within it that differ in methodology. Each of us identifies as cultural organisers in different geographies, committed to institution-building, generating public discourse and community-led perspectives.

"As curators, we don’t distinguish between artists who have worked for decades and those at the beginning of their careers" — Natasha Ginwala

Archival photos of rehearsals and performances of Chandralekha’s choreography, 1971–1998; Photograph courtesy Sharjah Art Foundation; Photograph by Motaz Mawid

What shaped your approach to selecting artists?

As curators, we don’t distinguish between artists who have worked for decades and those at the beginning of their careers. There is a fundamental commitment to creating a horizontal and open space for intergenerational dialogue and mutual flourishing. This has been an important facet of my work in previous biennial engagements and in Colomboscope as a South Asia-based endeavour.

That said, many of us are working with artists in the early stages of their journeys. There is a vivid exploration of material innovation, narrative-building and collective authorship. Cultural producers from across Palestine have attended to art-making as custodianship and shared responsibility towards land, kinship and sovereign life. Indigenous visions are central to this edition, not as illustrations of a theme, but as collective methods and long-term creative relations.

How does the Biennial engage interdisciplinary practices?

I contributed to co-curator Zeynep Öz’s publication series YAZ, which intersects book-making with spatial practices and artistic research. For one of the publications, I invited artists Rajyashri Goody, Fazal Rizvi and Ayumi Paul. Several projects engage with music traditions and sonic practice, exploring facets of aural memory, choral practices, ancient instrumentation and the role of song in solidarity-building. We are also producing vinyl records as part of this edition. I’m collaborating with drummer, composer and producer Sarathy Korwar on a vinyl album The Ancestral Well: Pulse to Terrain, which includes jazz and electronic compositions, East African polyrhythms and spoken word, to be launched this April.

Rehearsal of Prana at SPACES (previously Mandala), Elliot’s Beach, Madras (now Chennai), 1991; . Photograph by Dashrath Patel; Courtesy of Chandralekha Archive, SPACES, Chennai. Installation view: Sharjah Biennial 16, Al Qasimiyah School, Sharjah, 2025. Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation. Photo: Motaz Mawid

Cassi Namoda, various works from ‘Carapau in the deep abyss’, 2024. Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation. Installation view: Sharjah Biennial 16, Bait Habib Yousef, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah, 2025. Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation; Photograph by Ivan Erofeev

Could you highlight a few of the artworks you’re working closely on?

There are around 150 artists participating in Sharjah Biennial 16, so I prefer not to single out specific perspectives. However, to name a few of the 29 artists I’m working closely with: Mónica de Miranda’s ecofeminist film and photographic work, As If the World Had No West, filmed in the Namibe Desert on the southwest coast of Angola. An archival presentation including rare performance videos from the oeuvre of dancer, choreographer and poet Chandralekha, paired with a newly commissioned performance by poet and dancer Tishani Doshi with Dhrupad vocalist Pelva Naik.

Fazal Rizvi and Pallavi Paul consider elemental facets of death rituals in North India and among Shia communities in Pakistan, breath and time-keeping, and lament as spiritual practice. Rajni Perera’s sculptures and paintings explore speculative future-building, cosmic ancestors and hybrid beings entangled in the dance of extinction. M’barek Bouhchichi’s installation is inspired by ancient water vessels and multilingual verse dedicated to civilisational rupture. Rajyashri Goody’s Is the Water Chavdar? turns to Ambedkarite struggle, water politics and narrative agency. There will also be a survey of Kerala-born, Paris-based artist Viswanadhan’s early drawings, paintings, photo-based and cinematic work.

What is the context of Sharjah as a site for this Biennial?

My research extends from the Indian Ocean world and Afrasian historical relations, re-situated in Sharjah Creek today. The artists’ correspondences engage live networks of exchange and alliance. Many projects reflect on marine cosmopolitanism, ancestral memory and non-linear historiography, while others confront present ecologies of war and nationalism.

The Sharjah Biennial plays a seminal role in the region as a communal sphere for multi-directional perspectives. It’s far more than an art destination to ‘be seen’, the Foundation has a long-term commitment visible in the continuities between biennials, annual exhibitions and gatherings like March Meeting and Focal Point. Site-responsive artistic experiments and critical dialogue occur in drawn-out, meaningful ways. I’ve had some of my most memorable conversations in Sharjah, where genuine hospitality flourishes, in contrast to the frenzy of many cultural events today. The city draws on its cosmopolitan history to foster cultural leadership attuned to today’s geopolitical realignments and the need for pluralism in artistic imagination.

Cassi Namoda, Condemned to perpetual pillage in Zambeziland. 2024. From ‘Carapau in the deep abyss’, 2024. Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation. Installation view: Sharjah Biennial 16, Bait Habib Yousef, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah, 2025. Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation. Photograph by Ivan Erofeev

Aluaiy Kaumakan, Vines in the Mountains, 2020. Aluaiy Kaumakan, Blooming, 2018. All works courtesy of the artist, Indigenous Peoples Cultural Center, Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Liang Gallery, Taipei. Installation view: Sharjah Biennial 16, Old Al Diwan Al Amiri, Al Hamriyah, 2025. Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation; Photography by Ivan Erofeev

How has your broader biennial-making practice evolved over time?

Over the past decade, I’ve connected with different streams of artistic production, pedagogical tools and broad publics. This has led to continued reflection on how creative impulses can have lasting impacts on the social fabric of a place. The biennial has often been described as a time-based institution, but I believe it can be more – a compelling social experiment that re-orients our relationship to contemporary culture through direct experience.

While the gig economy poses serious challenges, observing from within how recurring exhibition models have reshaped the international arts landscape has been crucial. Biennials have fuelled new participatory ideas, challenged commercial trends and exposed the blind spots, inequities and failures of both museums and privately funded foundations.

How do site-specific works shape this edition of the Biennial?

Sharjah Art Foundation has a longstanding commitment to preserving local architecture and reactivating it as public culture, rather than competing with the Dubai skyline. The windward orientation, facing the open sea, instils a sense of consciousness in artists and curators alike. Works are sited in spaces ranging from school buildings and desert villages to a geology park and the Old Jubail Vegetable Market.

I particularly enjoyed working with the Old Jubail Market, where Aziz Hazara engaged with post-war economies, US foreign policy and the failures of development aid after the NATO occupation of Afghanistan. The site-responsive pedagogy of Sakiya, founded in a historic West Bank village by artist-educator Nida Sinnokrot and architect-organiser Sahar Qawasmi, explores water infrastructures and regenerative architecture in militarised environments. Their epic installation, a rescaled chicken coop in the form of the US Capitol, critiques the destructive political records of our time.