PAST

In the Heart of Another Country explores the concept of home—of longing and belonging. Drawn from the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection, the artworks included in this choreographed scenography span from 1935 to the present and have traversed routes from Colombo to London, from Cairo to Zanzibar through to the foothills of Mount Tamalpaïs in California, and back again. What unites these myriad artworks, and their makers, is the emirate of Sharjah, which has historically served as a site of encounter and exchange amongst artists and intellectuals, fostering an ongoing space for the diasporic imagination to come to life.

In these galleries, migrating forms—emblems of political abstraction emerge into being as propositional architectures. Artists’ experiments in photography and painting construct distinctive and reflective portraits, creating portals into multiple seats of both individual and shared cultural memory. Elsewhere, the mutable nature of geographic borders, histories of trade and migration are examined. Collectively, these expressions of artistic imagination reflect how movement across space and time has shaped the frames of modern and contemporary art across the world today.

A public and community programme will unfold during the course of the exhibition's run.

Participating artists: Mohamed Abdrassul, Bani Abidi, Ahmed Omar Addow, Etel Adnan, Novera Ahmed, Latif Al Ani, Halil Altindere, Rushdi Anwar, Minam Apang, Rasheed Araeen, Dana Awartani, Sonia Balassanian, Thuraya Al-Baqsami, Lothar Baumgarten, Richard Bell, Semiha Berksoy, Huma Bhabha, Huguette Caland, CAMP, Tony Chakar, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Tiffany Chung, Thomas Demand, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Simone Fattal, Meschac Gaba, Marcos Grigorian, Andreas Gursky, Abbas Habiballa, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Rokni Haerizadeh, Adam Henein, Lubaina Himid, Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim, Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, Hayv Kahraman, Mohammed Kazem, Ali Kazim, Amal Kenawy, Omer Khairy, Helen Khal, Anuar Khalifi, David Koloane, Bertina Lopes, Tala Madani, MARWAN, Ibrahim Massouda, Ahmed Morsi, Farhad Moshiri, Fateh Moudarres, Hamid Nada, Amir Nour, Nika Oblak & Primož Novak, Nam June Paik, Michael Rakowitz, Marwan Rechmaoui, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Mohan Samant, Mona Saudi, Hassan Sharif, Anwar Jalal Shemza, Ahmed Shibrain, Lionel Wendt, Kamal Youssef, Akram Zaatari, Fahrelnissa Zeid.