Sharjah Biennial 15, "Thinking Historically in the Present," opened across Sharjah Art Foundation venues, including the newly inaugurated Kalba Ice Factory. Initially conceived by the late curator and critic Okwui Enwezor and realized by Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, the biennial gathered more than 300 works and artists from dozens of countries around questions of postcolonial history, institutional memory, solidarity and the relationship between local and global art worlds. Its delayed realization after the pandemic gave Al Qasimi time to expand research and emphasize artists whose practices had been underrepresented in dominant contemporary-art circuits. The opening also marked the 30-year legacy of the Sharjah Biennial and the consolidation of Sharjah as a major non-Western contemporary-art center.
The edition strengthened Sharjah's role as a global biennial platform shaped by postcolonial curatorial thinking.