March Meeting 2022

Sharjah Art Foundation’s March Meeting, an annual programme that convenes artists, art professionals, and academics for panels, lectures and performances exploring critical issues in contemporary art, returns in 2022 with a three-day schedule of online and in-person programmes. Expanding upon March Meeting 2021: Unravelling the Present, March Meeting 2022: The Afterlives of the Postcolonial will examine the legacies of colonialism and the contemporary impacts of related issues on cultural, aesthetic and artistic practices around the world.  Together, both of these March Meetings serve as preludes to Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present, conceived by the late Okwui Enwezor (1963–2019) and curated by SAF Director Hoor Al Qasimi, which opens in February 2023.

Drawing upon Enwezor’s concept of the ‘Postcolonial Constellation’, March Meeting 2022  considers contemporary art and issues through the lens of postcolonialism, the critical study of the historical, social and cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism. From this perspective, participants analyse a wide array of current global issues, such as racism, settler colonialism, apartheid, persistent structural inequalities, new imperial wars, migration, social movements including Black Lives Matter, Indigenous rights, climate change and the restitution and repatriation of looted artefacts. The programme also explores theoretical frameworks such as ‘intersectionality’, ‘coloniality’, ‘decoloniality’ and ‘gendered identities’. To discuss the ‘afterlives’ of the postcolonial, the March Meeting convenes key voices in art and academia whose work reflects discourses, practices, theories and critical perspectives derived from postcolonialism but focused on the world in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and its present and future challenges.

Following March Meeting 2021, which examined the 30-year history of the Sharjah Biennial and the future of the biennial model, March Meeting 2022 further engages with Enwezor’s framework for Sharjah Biennial 15, building momentum towards its opening in February 2023. Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present, will continue to explore these themes, bringing together 30 artists—including John Akomfrah, Coco Fusco, Hassan Hajjaj, Isaac Julien, Bouchra Kahlil, Kerry James Marshall, Steve McQueen, Wangechi Mutu, Doris Salcedo, Yinka Shonibare, Carrie Mae Weems, among others—to make commissioned works, which examine histories that continue to shape our present, alongside a selection of contemporary works by international artists.