Sharjah Biennial 16

Abstract This article is a review of Sharjah Biennial 16 (2025), a sprawling exhibition united by the theme to carry, which explores potential points of solidarity across geographies and across time, mirrored within the structures of its collaborative curatorial approach. It is cocurated by five women, Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Ginwala, and Zeynep Öz. Rather than functioning as a curatorial collective, each curator has in some ways prepared a separate theoretical strand, almost like five separate exhibitions. In this exhibition, collectivity becomes the network of relationships between disparate individuals carrying their personal, familial, and cultural histories and hoping to find resonance in some common ground. The review focuses on artworks by Mila Turajlić, M'barek Bouhchichi, Fazal Rizvi, Monira Al Qadiri, and Stephanie Comilang.