Running from 6 February to 15 June 2025, SB16 will activate venues in Sharjah City, Al Hamriyah, Al Dhaid, Kalba and other locations in the Emirate of Sharjah, and bring together a diverse and broad range of perspectives.
Curated by Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Ginwala and Zeynep Öz.
©️ Still from As if the world had no West (2024) by Mónica de Miranda
“As if the world has no West” will premiere at Exposed Torino. The movie proposes the creation of new landscapes by investigating hidden, yet metaphysically present ecologies in Angola, deconstructing western understandings of memory, history, and land. The project enquires in the work of anthropologist Augusto Zita investigations in the Namibia desert, in which he devised a nature-oriented space/time system having light as a third dimension.
This work will bring forward this research , while deconstructing the understanding of land and looking at the land as a place of mutual care and liberation, As if the world had no west reveals nonwestern configurations of landscape.
EXPOSED is Turin’s new international festival of photography, which every year will bring temporary exhibitions, a specialised fair, educational activities, meetings, artistic commissions and off-site events centered around a theme to the Piedmontese capital in May. Promoted by the City of Turin, the Piedmont Region, the Turin Chamber of Commerce, Intesa Sanpaolo, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo and Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT on behalf of Fondazione CRT and organised by Fondazione per la Cultura Torino, EXPOSED was created to strengthen the deep bond between Turin and photography.
Photographies of the african diaspora in Lisbon (1975-today). Temporary exhibition, curated by Filipa Lowndes Vicente and Inocência Mata, bringing together photographs depicting the self-representation of the African diaspora in Portugal. These are “family albums” featuring images that Afro-Portuguese and African individuals have captured of themselves and their communities since 1975, when African countries gained independence from Portuguese colonization.
Image credits: Born and Die from the series Field Works, Mónica de Miranda
The 14th iteration of Black Portraitures (BP) will take place over two days during the vernissage of the 60th Anniversary of the Venice Biennale. This year’s theme, Shifting Paradigms, will center thought leaders from Africa and the African Diaspora who are creating new models for the education, cultivation, exhibition, dissemination, and collection of art and images. The aim of the conference aligns well with the Venice Biennale’s theme, Foreigner’s Everywhere. Panelists will include a transnational list of artists, curators, art historians, writers, educators, collectors, gallerists, architects, and designers who use the experience of Blackness to facilitate new systems of knowledge within the field of art and storytelling. This version of BP will break new ground in numerous fields such as exhibition making, visual studies, art history, cultural criticism, the art market, urban planning, and Africana Studies.
PANEL:
Archives, Collections and Curating, April 21 from 9:00 – 10:15 AM This conversation will foreground the ways in which the processes of acquiring, maintaining and caring for cultural objects has subverted misconceptions about the lack of Black and
African history, and created new modes to engage with material, textual and visual culture. Liz Andrews is the moderator for this panel with Paul Ninson, LeRonn Brooks, Steven Booth, Alberta Whittle, and Monica DiMiranda as the panelists.
Greenhouse is a project developed by Mónica de Miranda, Sónia Vaz Borges and Vânia Gala. The project is grounded in interconnections of practice, theory, and pedagogy, presenting the exhibition space as a place of experimentation and reflection. The curatorial and artistic team – including a visual artist, a choreographer and a researcher – proposes collective actions through pedagogy, sound and movement that reflect on the relationship between nature, ecology and politics. The project undertakes the deconstruction of the very epistemology of the exhibition space and the hierarchical binaries of curator and artist, thought and practice, human and nature. The garden becomes a space for continuous, dialogical creation between the artists and the public.
La Biennale di Venezia was established in 1895 and is today acknowledged as one of the most prestigious cultural institutions. La Biennale di Venezia stands at the forefront of research and promotion of new contemporary art trends and organizes events in all its specific Departments: Art (1895), Architecture (1980), Cinema (1932), Dance (1999), Music (1930), and Theatre (1934) – alongside research and training activities.
The sun does not rise in the north will be screened at The Art Explora Festival in Venice, Italy as part of their Museum Boat program. Art Explora is an itinerant festival that travels the world’s seas and oceans with its museum boat, offering innovative artistic and cultural experiences.
Moving across the shores between Ceuta (Spain) and Tangier, Morocco, a man and woman discover the present borders and past archaeologies of these lands that were once one and now exist separately.
©️ Still from The sun does not rise in the north by Mónica de Miranda, 2023
“The sun does not rise in the north” (2023) series
The Sun Does Not Rise in the North examines the complex diversity of personal and collective histories interconnected between the migrant and the diasporic experience in Europe. It is a continuous relational praxis that de Miranda depicts and deconstructs through counter-narratives of belonging, as well as on the (re)elaboration of memory in post-colonial discourses.
Malta’s first art biennale will be a visual festa, inspired by a process of formulating new narratives for the region, and a provocative rethink of global mindsets, emanating from the European continent’s deep south. Narratives that confront the horrendous stink of death by drowning; narratives that can defeat discourse fuelling fundamentalism and nationalism – a choral ‘hymn to the universe’, celebrating peace and harmony, defying war(s) with olive branches in hand, gleaned from the evergreen olive groves of the Mediterranean, blending with the sparkling whiteness of the seas that surround them: a provocative artistic initiative inviting a rethink of global mindsets about art and society, emanating from the deep south of the European continent.
Curated by Elisa Carollo, Emma Mattei together with artistic director Sofia Baldi Pighi and set designer Nigel Baldacchino.
“THE SUN DOES NOT RISE IN THE NORTH” (2023)
The Sun Does Not Rise in the North examines the complex diversity of personal and collective histories interconnected between the migrant and the diasporic experience in Europe. It is a continuous relational praxis that de Miranda depicts and deconstructs through counter-narratives of belonging, as well as on the (re)elaboration of memory in post-colonial discourses.” Fragment of the exhibition text, The Sun Does Not Rise in the North at Sabrina Amrani gallery.
ARCOmadrid is Spain’s International Contemporary Art Fair which, since its creation, has been one of the main contemporary art market platforms. In 2024, it will hold its 43rd edition with the Caribbean at its core. The programme curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates and Sara Hermann Morera, ‘The shore, the tide, the current: an oceanic Caribbean’, will hinge on the art scenes of the lands connected by this sea.
“THE ISLAND” (2022)
‘The Island’ was part of the COLOMBOSCOPE festival in theme of ‘Way of the forest’, curated by Sarker Protick, Sheelasha Rajbhandari and Hit Man Gurung. With artistic director, Natasha Ginwala. COLOMBOSCOPE is a contemporary arts festival and creative platform for interdisciplinary dialogue.
COLOMBOSCOPE is a contemporary arts festival and creative platform for interdisciplinary dialogue that has grown steadily within the cultural landscape of Colombo, Sri Lanka since 2013.
Including an artist conversation of the festival on 19 January, 3 – 4 pm at SNAFU together with Fernando García-Dory, Mónica de Miranda, Shiraz Bayjoo, Subas Tamang and Müge Yılmaz moderated by art historian and curator Anna Arabindan-Kesson. This session foregrounded the ongoing arc of artistic thinking and research behind the projects in Way of the Forest. Our connection to botanical histories, agroforestry and gardening as spaces of learning, and anti-colonial legacies in relation to today’s ecopolitical challenges were discussed. Moderated by art historian and writer Anna Arabindan Kesson.
“THE SUN DOES NOT RISE ON THE NORTH” (2023) series
In 2024, Dulwich Picture Gallery will present Soulscapes, a major exhibition of landscape art that will expand and redefine the genre. Featuring more than 30 contemporary works, it will span painting, photography, film, tapestry and collage from leading artists including Hurvin Anderson, Phoebe Boswell, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Kimathi Donkor, Isaac Julien, Marcia Michael, Mónica de Miranda and Alberta Whittle, as well as some of the most important emerging voices working today.
Soulscapes will explore our connection with the world around us through the eyes of artists from the African Diaspora. It will consider the power of landscape art and reflect on themes of belonging, memory, joy and transformation.