BRINGING PEOPLE TO ART
Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, the head of the Sharjah Biennial, says such events aren’t just about the art world,
Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi is royalty, the daughter of the hereditary ruler of the Arab Emirate of Sharjah. She’s also one of the top 50 most influential people in the art world, according to Art Review, for her stewardship of the Sharjah Biennial, which she’s transformed from a polite local display to an international art-world destination. And while she’s happy to welcome the world, for her the biennial is less about global recognition than what it can do for the people who live there — a lesson that Toronto, contemplating two biennial projects of its own, could take to heart. Qasimi, 35, is speaking at the ROM on tonight, but we caught up with her in Chicago for a pre-chat.
At last count, according to the Biennial Foundation, there are more than 150 art biennial-like events all over the world. We do a lot of hand-wringing here about having our own biennial. There’s a prevailing sense that we want the world to notice us and a biennial is a way to do that. What’s your take on that?
Well, I would have to say it has to start from the other side. For us at least, it’s not about creating a space for people to notice us so much as it is about bringing people from across the road inside to see what’s going on in their own neighbourhood. That’s always been where we start. For me, this is really about the public. It’s not so much about the art world. That’s so small. If you’re just doing things for an elite, you’re really excluding a lot of people and what’s the point of that? We’re here to educate and to welcome.
One of the reasons biennials have popped up all over the world is a prevailing belief that they’ll produce waves of cultural tourism. Here in Toronto, that’s the pitch that has to be made to even begin to court government funding. How do you view that as a starting point for these kinds of events?
I’m on the board of the International Biennial Association and I try to explain to people how the role of biennials has changed. Sure, they may have begun as a way to bring in tourism, but more and more biennials are not about tourism; they are about the actual communities in which they operate. Of course tourists come, it’s a fact of it. When we do exhibitions, we get a lot of the international art crowd. Look, they come because it’s a good biennial! They come to research, just like we do elsewhere. But that’s not who we’re thinking about. It’s more challenging for us to engage with the local community than with the international art crowd and more meaningful as well.
When the Sharjah Biennial started in 1993, you were 13 years old. By 2002, you were in charge of it. How did that happen?
Well, it was in an expo centre, which was used for trade fairs, and there was country representation: each country had a booth. And it was fine. I looked forward to it every year. But in my gap year between my BA and my MA, I was in Berlin with my father. I was speaking with the director of the Hamburger Bahnhof (museum) there, and she said, “Why don’t you go see documenta?” (Note: Documenta, which happens in Germany every five years, is generally seen as the premiere event in the international art world.) And I didn’t know documenta. I was just a painter. I went to visit and the first thing that came to mind was how political it was, how relevant it was to a lot of issues. I was really inspired. I just thought, “Why isn’t our biennial more like this?” I went back and asked just to see how it happened, and I promised not to interfere. But I ended up interfering. And I got under the skin of a few people who ended up quitting and saying, “Do it yourself.” So it ended up being my job just by default.
You changed everything: commissioning projects, moving it out of the expo hall, doing away with the national booths. How was it received initially?
I had one guy storm into the office with a painting and said he wanted to hang it in the biennial. “I’ll bring my own hammer and nail,” he said. “Just give me a wall.” And I had to explain to him that’s not the point. He started yelling at me: “I was painting before you were born!” So I got a lot of complaints. We had artists who were in the biennial every two years and expected to be, but in the end I think they understood what we did and why we did it. They eventually said they wanted to be in it when their work was relevant to the project and not just because they happened to be here.
Being sensitive to what’s happening locally is your calling card, then, but not in a tokenistic way.
Definitely. This is an opportunity to learn. Little moments make me happy. We did a small exhibition of the Kabakovs’ work (Ilya and Emilia) and we had an opening. A TV crew wanted to do an interview, but there were some little kids in the courtyard, so I asked someone else in my office to do it and I took this group of kids into the show. As I did, the group started to grow, from seven to 10, then 15 or more. What was great about that was that I’ve been seeing these kids in the galleries and in the exhibitions all the time since. They’re growing up with this. It’s part of their lives. They can go on and be whatever it is they will grow up to be, but this is an experience they’ll always have.
Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi is delivering the annual Holtby Lecture at the Royal Ontario Museum tonight at 7 p.m. See rom.on.ca/en/whats-on for tickets.