April Acts 2025: to carry new formations

How can we reimagine and critically investigate our current situations or positions to construct and manifest new approaches to resistance, reciprocity, communal networks and life-enabling systems and structures? to carry new formations explores this overarching question through the exchange of ideas and practices, bringing together conversations, performance, cultural expression, art and activism.

April Acts 2025 takes place as a key extension of Sharjah Biennial 16, which features more than 650 works by nearly 200 participants, including more than 200 new commissions. Curated by Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Ginwala and Zeynep Öz, SB16 convenes under the title to carry. A multivocal and open-ended proposition exploring the ever-expanding questions of what to carry and how to carry it, SB16 is an invitation to encounter the different formations and positions of the five curators as well as the resonances they have gathered.

Using SB16 as both a platform and an instrument, April Acts 2025 engages with the works at the Biennial to highlight independent and collective dialogues around systemic transition, societal shifts, ruptured and recovered histories, forms of collective organising, leadership (including communal leadership) and old knowledge reimagined in new forms. Encouraging practices of new and experimental methodologies, self-organisation and deep reflection and listening, the programme explores collaborative cultural production, acoustic heritage, creative infrastructures under threat, and the spatial and psychic boundaries that limit the movement of people and ideas. The programme builds off Sharjah’s proximity to the sea to bolster discussions on belonging, mobility and marine traffic.

Through panel discussions, artist talks, participatory workshops, film screenings and live music performances, April Acts 2025 aims to create a polyphonous space that invites multiple perspectives to co-exist and thrive. Among the offerings are guided walks; a listening session with Singing Wells; Risograph printing workshops; Self-Publishing workshops using several printing techniques such as Risograph, including a workshop led by Bhumika Saraswati and Siddhesh Gautam (founders of the magazine All That Blue); discussions with artists such as Brian Martin, Yhonnie Scarce and Megan Cope; and a screening of First Horse (2024) by Awanui Simich-Pene. Başak Günak, Berke Can Özcan, Sandy Chamun and Hauptmeier I Recker will collaborate in a performance based on their sound installation in the Biennial; Koleka Putuma will offer a performance titled WATER (reprise); and there will also be a series of performances based on the SB16 work He Kōrero Pūrākau mō te Awanui o te Motu: Story of a New Zealand river (2011), the red, fully carved Steinway concert grand by Māori artist Michael Parekōwhai. Additionally, an invitation-only curatorial workshop anchored in the ethos of the Biennial creates space for collective wayfinding, offering a moment to reflect on what we inherit, what we hold, and what we must reimagine in order to carry forward new formations of support, resistance and continuity.

For more information on Sharjah Biennial 16, please visit sharjahart.org

List of Participants

Akinbode Akinbiyi, Akram Zaatari, Al MacSween, Albert L Refiti, Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Andrew J. Eisenberg, Avni Sethi, Başak Günak, Berke Can Özcan, Bettina Ng'weno, Bhumika Saraswati, Bint Mbareh, Brian Martin, Caroline Courrioux, Claudia Martinez Garay, Christianna Bonin, Daniela Castro, Dawn Chan, E.N Mirembe, Engseng Ho, Fatma Belkıs, George Jose, Georgina Velasco (The Voice of Domestic Workers), Gita Rani, Grace Hussein Karima and Leah Ndahani Zawose (Zawose Sisters), Hauptmeier I Recker, Hsu Fang-Tze, John Clang, Jo-Lene Ong, Koleka Putuma, Mahmoud Khaled, Marigold Quimoy Balquen (The Voice of Domestic Workers), Mariam M. Alnoaimi, May Adadol Ingawanij, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Ginwala, One Sudan One Sound of Solidarity (OSOS), Raafat Majzoub, Red de Reproducción y Distribución (Reproduction and Distribution Network), Rosie Olang' Odhiambo, Sa Tahanan Collective, Sandy Chamoun, Sarathy Korwar, Seema Alavi, Siddhesh Gautam, Sophia Tintori, Tabu Osusa, Taloi Havini, Tara Al Dughaither, Yasmine El Rashidi, Zeynep Öz.