The third-largest of the seven emirates and the only one overlooking both the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, Sharjah, unlike Dubai and Abu Dhabi – temples of exclusive shopping and kitsch tourism – is a normal place, where there is no apparent imitation of the West, but, despite a sound vision of tourism and commercial development, strong cultural roots are maintained. Ancient buildings, museums, and the Biennale are the pieces of a vibrant cultural mosaic, the cornerstone of a development policy that seeks revenues other than oil, with a view to preserving its heritage and identity.
Artistically speaking, the Biennale run by Sharjah Art Foundation is the most important event of the contemporary scene, along with many other exhibitions. The Foundation delivers year-round exhibitions, performances, screenings and education programmes across the Emirate, often in repurposed historic buildings, and maintains a growing collection supporting new work and recognising pioneering modern artists. The 2026 programme also marks the reopening of Al Majarrah Park, redesigned by the SUPERFLEX collective in collaboration with landscape architecture firms. The park becomes a hybrid urban space, where the memory of the historic neighbourhood, the desert landscape, and the participation of the local community are translated into undulating paths and monumental sculptures inspired by everyday objects.
It is within this framework of cultural preservation and reinvention that the exhibitions of Ahaad Alamoudi and Jorge Tacla take form, each approaching transformation from a different vantage point.
The Aftermath Of Destruction
Where Alamoudi explores the spectacle of progress, Jorge Tacla confronts what remains when progress collapses into ruin. Tacla’s retrospective Time the destroyer is time the preserver (on display until June 7th) brings together over 70 paintings and more than 100 works on paper from the mid-1980s to the present. A third-generation Chilean of Palestinian and Syrian descent, the artist has been working between Santiago and New York since 1981, unravelling the intricate geopolitical causalities binding Latin America, West Asia, and the United States.
Over the last four decades, Tacla’s practice has unfolded alongside major transformations in visual politics around human rights. The world has seen satellite imagery increasingly supplant personal testimony as the dominant form of historicizing and adjudicating mass atrocities. Far removed from politics on-the-ground, this mode of witnessing has further amplified a geopolitical order in which certain human lives are valued more than others.