Five Works to See at Sharjah Biennial 16

By Chloe Stead. 22 May 2025. https://hyperallergic.com/care-and-connection-are-at-the-heart-of-the-2025-hawaii-triennial/.

Megan Cope, Kinyingarra Poles, 2023–24. Installation view, Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry, Buhais Geology Park, Sharjah, 2025. Assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia. Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Meanjin/Brisbane. Photo: Ali Alfadly.

The 16th Sharjah Biennial, titled ‘To Carry’, unfolds across the Emirate of Sharjah from 6 February to 15 June, 2025. Spanning 17 venues – including Al Mureijah Square, Kalba Ice Factory and the Buhais Geology Park – it showcases over 650 works by 200 artists, with more than 80 new commissions. Curated by an all-female team – Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Ginwala, and Zeynep Öz – the biennial invites reflection on themes of migration, memory and resilience.

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Megan Cope, Kinyingarra Poles (2024)

It’s an hour drive from Sharjah Art Foundation to Buhais Geological Park, but it’s worth enduring one of the Emirate’s most infamous traffic jams to see Megan Cope’s Kinyingarra Poles (2024). Comprising more than 150 timber poles wrapped in garlands of oyster shells, this site-specific installation blends seamlessly into the spectacular landscape of the park, which sits on a former seabed surrounded by the rocky mountain range of Jebel Buhais. The piece references the importance of oyster harvesting for the indigenous Quandamooka people – who live around Mulgumpin / Moreton Bay in Australia – and builds on the research behind Kinyingarra Guwinyanba (2022–ongoing), a living, generative intertidal sculpture Cope installed in Quandamooka Country in an attempt to heal an ecosystem disseminated by colonial-era overfarming. By installing a new version of this work in the once-fertile, now-arid Buhais Park, Cope speaks to ‘deep time’ – the many billions of years of geological history that preceded us.