Agence France Presse — English
April 11, 2005 Monday 3:10 PM GMT

Iran’s Khatami to inaugurate new dam on Turkmen border

ASHGABAT

Turkmenistan made final preparations on Monday for the inauguration
of a new dam on the Turkmen-Iranian river border by Turkmenistan
President Saparmurat Niyazov and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad
Khatami, Turkmen officials said.

The two men will meet on Tuesday to open the new Dostluk (friendship)
dam located on the Tejen River, known in Iran as the Harir-Roud, in
the Germab mountain range 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of the
Turkmen town of Serahs and 250 kilometres (155 miles) east of the
Iranian city of Mashhad, a senior official at Turkmenistan’s water
resources ministry said.

The project reflects growing ties between this former Soviet republic
and its south-western neighbour Iran.

This “is a symbol of our good neighbourly relations,” the water
resources official told AFP.

Built at a cost of some 167 million dollars (130 million euros), the
structure measures some 655 metres (2,150 feet) in length and is
entirely located on Turkmen territory.

Its reservoir spans the border however and will eventually hold some
1.25 billion cubic metres (43.75 billion cubic feet), said Muratgeldy
Akmamadov, project director for the Turkmen side.

The dam will initially be used for irrigation, although the
possibility of generating electricity has also been mooted.

“This structure, important for the economies of both countries, will
irrigate more than 50,000 hectares (125,000 acres) of Turkmen and
Iranian territory,” Akmamadov told AFP.

The project is one of a number of joint water projects involving Iran
and neighbours such as Turkmenistan and Armenia aimed at meeting
northern Iran’s growing irrigation and energy requirements, a
regional water expert told AFP.

Turkmenistan has in recent years begun supplying north-east Iran with
electricity generated from its important natural gas reserves.

Agence France Presse — English
April 12, 2005 Tuesday 5:18 PM GMT

Thousands expected to visit simple papal tomb

VATICAN CITY April 12

White lilies, their fluted petals like a nun’s coif, have been placed
at the head of the John Paul II’s tomb in St Peter’s crypt, which is
to be opened to the public shortly after dawn on Wednesday.

Tens of thousands of pilgrims, many of them Poles who have remained
in Rome since the pope’s funeral last Friday, are expected to visit
the tomb in the coming days.

With talk of early sainthood for the late pope swirling about the
Vatican, the site is sure to join the Sistine Chapel and Vatican
museum as a regular stop on Rome pilgrimages.

Around 100 cardinals filed past the tomb on Tuesday, bowing their
heads in solemn acknowledgement of their former leader, after a
memorial mass for the pope.

Immediately afterwards, the Polish nuns from the pope’s household
knelt before the tomb in prayer. Earlier, Sister Nirmala, the head of
Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity order, visited the grotto.

What tourists will see is a simple white slab of Carrara marble
marking the spot where John Paul II was laid to rest.

It is set into an alcove in the vaulted crypt in the bowels of St
Peter’s Basilica, a perpetual red oil lamp burning at its foot, the
lilies bursting from a profusion of green at its head.

The slab bears simple markings in Latin, “Ioannus Paulus PP II” with
the dates of his pontificate underneath, 16 X 1978 – 2 IV 2005. The
pope left instructions that he wanted to be buried in the earth, and
not in a sarcophagus like all but one of his neighbours, Paul VI.

Set into the wall above is a marble relief of a Madonna and Child, in
reference to the pope’s particular devotion to the Virgin Mary, whom
he credited with miraculously saving his life by diverting a would-be
assassin’s bullet from his heart in 1981.

Though the crypt contains the remains of 62 pontiffs, John Paul II
lies closest to two women, — Queen Cristina of Sweden, who abdicated
after converting to Catholicism, and Queen Charlotte of Cyprus,
Jerusalem and Armenia who died in 1487.

In an ornate, gilded gallery a few metres (yards) away lie the
remains of St Peter, the apostle, the first leader of the Church,
personally appointed by Jesus.

To reach the John Paul II’s tomb, pilgrims will have to pass by those
of his immediate predecessors John Paul I and Paul VI.

The crypt is to be opened to the public at 7:00 am (0500 GMT) on
Wednesday. Vatican sources said pilgrims would not be allowed to
bring flowers, fearing that the small space could quickly be covered.

The New York Times
April 12, 2005 Tuesday
Late Edition – Final

Currency Is Music in East-West Exchange

By ALLAN KOZINN

Much of Yo-Yo Ma’s musical effort and imagination since 1998 has been
put at the service of his Silk Road Project, a series of concerts and
discs meant to revive and update the kind of cultural interchange
that occurred on the ancient trade route between Asia and Europe. As
a way to prevent his career from devolving into a routine of touring
with the same crowd-pleasing cello works over and over — however
sublimely Mr. Ma would have played them — it has been a brilliant
move.

The Silk Road, after all, is a perfect metaphor for the exchange he
is seeking, not only between Eastern and Western musicians, but also
between traditional and contemporary styles — and, judging from the
copious materials in the program book, between Western and Asian
archaeologists and historians. Even if the venue for this exchange is
now the recording studio and the concert stage rather than the Silk
Road itself, it was clear from the sheer joy of the music making on
Sunday evening at Carnegie Hall that the polystylistic dialogue Mr.
Ma is overseeing is as enlivening for the players as for the
listeners.

The stage arrangement, at the start of the concert, emphasized the
East-meets-West aspect of the project. Mr. Ma sat to one side of the
stage with the makings of a string quartet, plus a double bass and a
pipa (a Chinese lute). Across the way were three percussionists who
played Asian and African drums, and a performer on the duduk (an
Armenian reed instrument). Between them were performers playing a
kamancheh (an Iranian spike fiddle), a tar (an Azerbaijani lute) and
a tabla (an Indian drum).

The concert was at its best when the music was presented on its own
terms. That happened mainly in a set of pieces from Azerbaijan, sung
with passion and dramatic flair by Alim Qasimov, and accompanied by
Malik Mansurov on the tar and Rauf Islamov on the kamancheh.

Where musics were encouraged to meet, the encounters were sometimes
odd, and some worked better than others. When Wu Man played an
eighth-century pipa theme to introduce Zhao Jiping’s ”Sacred Cloud
Music,” a Western listener could not help but note a similarity to
the Dies Irae plainchant and when the strings joined, it was in a
chord progression that could have been borrowed from the Renaissance
— or, for that matter, from a contemporary mystic like Arvo Part.
Gevorg Dabaghyan’s duduk line in a set of Armenian folk melodies
captured the music’s soulful, lachrymose qualities so beautifully
that the string quartet accompaniment sounded contrived.

Perhaps the strangest instrumental combination was a set of Gypsy
dances at the end of the program, scored for strings, percussion and,
of all things, pipa, with solos all around. But the sheer virtuosity,
energy and inventiveness of the performances made it work.

There is a degree to which Mr. Ma’s project is also a stealth
new-music series, and Sunday’s program included several contemporary
scores that draw on Asian traditional themes and, at times, timbres.
”Mountains Are Far Away,” by Kayhan Kalhor, an Iranian composer,
proved a zesty opener, and the works by Zhao Jiping and Zhao Lin
(father and son) were seductively supple. The major modern offering,
though, was Franghiz Ali-Zadeh’s ”Mugam Sayagi,” a 1993 work for
string quartet and percussion that ranges from quasi-Minimalist
meditation to vigorous, spiky harmonies and that has an intensity
matching that of the traditional Azerbaijani music from which it drew
its inspiration.

The Gazette (Montreal)
April 12, 2005 Tuesday
Final Edition

Metro mugger needs love – not prison, supporters say: Youth who
shoved 90-year-old down stairs a victim of parental negligence, court
hears

SUE MONTGOMERY, The Gazette

Emrys Brooks Djierdjian made a terrible mistake when he robbed a
90-year-old woman and shoved her down some stairs, but he is a teen
in need of love and support, not prison time, say friends and
neighbours from his small village who have stepped forward to take
him under their collective wing.

The 18-year-old, who pleaded guilty to armed robbery, is a victim of
parental negligence, said Andre Lamarre, one of 17 residents of St.
Alphonse de Rodriguez, who showed up at Quebec Court yesterday to
vouch for the teen.

“I know he is a good person, but he lacked what all children need to
become a good citizen.”

Lawyer Marie-Laure Braun has asked that her client be released on
bail until he is sentenced.

Quebec Court Judge Jean-B. Falardeau is to render his decision
tomorrow.

An only child, Brooks Djierdjian attended school for just half a year
throughout the primary years, said supporter France Pellerin. His
Armenian father and anglophone mother kept him at home, so he never
developed normal social skills.

“When one of the neighbours had him over for dinner, he didn’t know
how to use cutlery and he put his arms around his plate, as if to
protect it, as if someone would take it from him,” she said.

“Where was the department of youth protection? Where was the school
board? Why didn’t anyone do anything to help him?”

Pellerin and others from the village of 2,000, 60 kilometres north of
Montreal, said they decided as a group that instead of sitting back
and watching bad news on television or reading about it in the paper,
they would take some responsibility as members of society.

They’ve raised money to pay for any therapy Brooks Djierdjian needs.

One has offered him a job.

Even the victim, Gemma Martel, who suffered a fractured pelvis,
broken arm and bleeding in the brain, has written a letter of
forgiveness to her aggressor, said supporter Catherine Ruiz-Gomar.

“If this society believes in rehabilitation, then we need to give
people the means to do it,” Lamarre said.

Those who know him describe Brooks Djierdjian as an intelligent teen
who reads a lot, is interested in the world and is not prone to
violence.

“He doesn’t have the profile of a criminal or someone who is
rebelling,” said Lamarre, who has taught CEGEP for 33 years.
“Perhaps, mentally, he’s a bit younger, but he needs compassion and
support to develop.”

Brooks Djierdjian’s life was made even more difficult when his mother
committed suicide in 2003.

When the boy turned 18, in January, his father dropped him in
Montreal with $100 in his pocket in order for him “to become a man,”
Pellerin said.

After the mugging at the Berri-UQAM metro station, police confirmed
Brooks Djierdjian had been living with friends downtown for a few
weeks.

The teen’s father, artist Berdj Djierdjian, has been present at his
son’s court dates, and admits the young man has had a hard life.

His mother was mentally ill and refused to speak to her son in the
years before her suicide, he has said.

ANSA English Media Service
April 12, 2005

TURKEY: INTELLECTUALS APPEAL AGAINST NATIONALIST WAVE

(ANSA) – ANKARA, April 12 – A group of 200 Turkish
intellectuals have published an open letter expressing their
concerns about the nationalist wave flooding the country, which
they believe risks heightening the internal tension with the
Kurds and giving an impetus to the external opposition to the
controversial Armenian genocide of 1915.

“Using recent events as pretext, attempts are being made to
hamper the peace process and the pacification of our country,”
the appeal, signed by academics, writers, artists, journalists
and heads of non-governmental organisations, published in
several Turkish newspapers, says.

The intellectuals backing the appeal refer to recent
incidents singalling a certain revival of nationalist moods,
which took place in Trabzon, on the Black Sea, between
nationalists and members of the Association of Solidarity Among
Families of Inmates (TAYAD).

Five TAYAD members were recently taken in custody by the
police accused of inflaming public feelings after escaping a
nationalist lynching by a crowd that wrongly took them for
supporters of a banned Kurdish rebel movement. Local media said
the crowd had mistaken the TAYAD members for followers of the
Kurdish PKK movement thinking the youths were thinking of burn a
Turkish flag at the time of the Newroz [spring New Year]
celebrations.

Nationalist feelings have been running high in Turkey since
young pro-Kurdish supporters tried to set fire to a Turkish flag
last month in the Mediterranean port city of Mersin. That
incident unleashed nationwide rallies in defence of the flag.

Another incident took place in Trabzon on Sunday where the
police intervened to protect and save some thirty TAYAD
activists who were staging a protest against the lynch attempts
from the previous days and who were attacked and roughed up by a
group of some 200 nationalists.

The Trabzon incidents are related, according to those
launching the appeal, to the wave of nationalist rallies and the
counter reaction to fly the Turkish flag in all Turkish towns in
the wake of the burning of the national flag in Mersin by a
group of youngsters who, the local press press said, could have
been inspired by Kurdish PKK movement militants.

“The reactions to this incident tend to verge on racism and
nationalism, not without the support of state officials,” the
200 intellectuals claim in their appeal focusing the attention
on the mass hysteria caused by both Kurdish and Turkish
nationalism.

The authors of the appeal also asked for the immediate
dismissal of the deputy governor of the Turkish town of
Sutculer, who recently who ordered the seizure and destruction
of works by novelist Orhan Pamuk for making a reference to the
massacre of Armenians. Pamuk said in an interview that in 1915
“nearly one million Armenians were massacred (by the Ottoman
government at the time, editor’s note) thus giving arguments to
the international community, contrasting with Turkey’s decisive
position, in support of the fact that this massacre was actually
“a genocide”.

The books, however, did not end on the pyre as it seemed none
of Pamuk’s books could be found in the local libraries. Still,
the steps taken by the high-ranking official tarred Turkey’s
image in the eyes of the European Union, with which accession
talks are due to start on October 3.

“These methods remind of the Nazi period,” the Turkish
intellectuals stressed in their appeal, calling upon the
government to distance itself from the incident by dismissing
the deputy governor. (ANSA)
krc

KARABAKH PEACE PROCESS GUARANTEE OF SOUTH CAUCASUS EXISTENCE: FRENCH SENATOR

YEREVAN, APRIL 12. ARMINFO. The Karabakh peace process is a guarantee
for the South Caucasus existence, says the head of the French-Azeri
friendship group of the French Senate Amrboise Dupont.

The 525th newspaper (Baku) reports Dupont as saying that Paris is
closely watching the OSCE MG process.

Asked if one can hope for France’s unbiased position in the context of
charges of pro-Armenian stance Dupont says that as OSCE MG co-chair
France does it best to attain fair resolution of the Karabakh
conflict. France is an arbiter in this game with the rules set by the
players, says Dupont noting that peaceful resolution is most desirable
in any case.

He says that French Senate is not planning any hearings of the
Karabakh issue. At least he has no such information. Such hearings may
be held between Poncelet and the presidents of the South Caucasian
parliaments.

Besides French Senate has a group called Audit who studies the
situation in conflict zones including in the South Caucasus.

YEAR 2005 WOULD BECOME CRUCIAL FOR INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION OF
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

YEREVAN, APRIL 12. ARMINFO. Turkey is a direct threat to natural
development of Armenia, Head of ARFD faction Levon Lazarian said at
the Armenian parliament today.

He said the recent events in the Turkish parliament directly
endangered the national security of Armenia. “Turkey keeps speaking
with Armenia in the language of force, having blocked the country’s
borders and blackmailing it by Karabakh issue,” he said. He said the
policy of Turkey with respect to the problem of genocide was aimed not
only against the past of the Armenian people, but also against its
present. At the same time, he pointed out that the whole Armenian
people was full of decisiveness to restore justice and protect its
rights. Lazarian expressed confidence that the year 2005 would become
crucial for the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide and
achievement of one of the tasks set by Hay Dat.

FACT THAT ARMENIAN PRESIDENT LED NKR DEFENCE IS GUARANTEE
THAT HE TO BE DETERMINED IN CONFLICT’s FAIR SETTLEMENT

YEREVAN. APRIL 12. ARMINFO. The fact that Armenian President Robert
Kocharyan had led himself the defence of Nagorny Karabakh is the best
guarantee that both he and political forces supporting him will be
determined in the packet settlement of Karabakh problem, stated Head
of ARFD party Levon Mkrtchayn at Armenia’s National Assembly. Apr 12.

He noted that the settlement of Karabakh problem is impossible
without deciding an issue on its status. He called all political
forces to refrain from any speculations round Karabakh issue which is
the main constituent of Armenia’s national security. “Before
criticizing president Kocharyan one should remember that he had not
removed his family from Nagorny Karabakh within the most difficult
years”, Lazarian stated. -r-

All CONFLICTS SHOULD BE SETTLED BY PEACE: US CO-CHAIR OF OSCE MG

YEREVAN, APRIL 12. ARMINFO. Each conflict has its peculiarities, says
US Co-chair of OSCE Minsk Group Stephen Mann says who is presently
heading a US diplomatic delegation in Abkhazia.

In an interview to REGNUM he says that he has never drawn parallels
between the Karabakh and Abkhazian conflicts but for one thing – all
the region’s conflicts must be settled by peace. The mediators in the
conflicts should pay more attention to what the conflicting parties
say rather than to what is published in the press.

Asked if he is expecting specific steps on the part of Baku in
response to Armenian Defence Minister’s recent speech where he voiced
some principal concessions Mann says that he prefers not to speak in
conditional mood. OSCE MG will continue its dialogue with the Armenian
and Azeri FMs and hopefully will attain some effective, constructive
and specific agreement.

The Daily Star, Lebanon
April 13 2005

Sharjah biennial: Wild card of culture in Arab world
Emirate puts on show that will endure through production of new and
original bodies of work

By Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
Daily Star staff
Wednesday, April 13, 2005

SHARJAH, U.A.E.: The art world dropped down on the sleepy Emirate of
Sharjah last week for the opening of an international biennial of
contemporary art intended to strengthen Sharjah’s reputation as a
cultural node in the Gulf’s otherwise exceedingly commercial tissue.

Sharjah Biennial 7 – which will be up and running at the Sharjah Expo
Center and Sharjah Art Museum through June 6 – launched with a
sprawling exhibition and a series of discussions.

Among the questions at play were: What can or should set the Sharjah
Biennial apart from other such events held every two years in nearly
every city in the world worth its salt? What can the Sharjah Biennial
contribute to the development of an art scene in Sharjah? What is the
relationship between the Sharjah Biennial and its local, regional,
and international context? And what is an event like this doing in
Sharjah, anyway?

Loosely arranged under the banner of “Belonging,” this Sharjah
Biennial features 74 artists from 36 countries. The exhibition’s
curatorial team includes Jack Persekian, the founder and director of
the Al-Mamal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem and an
influential curator responsible for, among other shows,
“DisORIENTation” in Berlin two years ago; Ken Lum, a Vancouver-based
artist who has long dealt with issues of creating art in politically
fraught circumstances; and Tirdad Zolghadr, a writer and curator
living in Zurich with an interest in how ethnicity is spun in an era
of globalization.

Together they interpreted the theme broadly and generously, allowing
enough space for each curator to posit his own particular point of
view.

“My personal concern and my personal investment,” says Persekian,
stems from “my identity, coming from Palestine, a place that is
completely torn apart. There’s that, being of Armenian descent,
carrying an American passport, and there’s my encounter with this
place. I was astonished by the sprawling development that has nothing
to do with land – offshore projects, reclaimed land, buildings going
up. There are so many foreigners here making a home. It’s the
antithesis of where I’m from.”

Like Persekian, many of the participating artists and attending
curators found themselves grappling with the sheer strangeness of
Sharjah, a sun-swept city-state with a population of 600,000 and 85
percent of them nonnationals. (Sharjah houses substantially large
Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi ex-patriate communities.)

As one of the seven tiny emirates that make up the U.A.E., Sharjah is
squashed between Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, and the Gulf
(whether you choose to define it as Persian or Arabian). Fifty years
ago it was a fishing village. Twenty years ago it was the preeminent
playground of the emirates, before Abu Dhabi and before Dubai,
drenched in oil money and bumping with clubs, girls and drinks.
Today, in a rather dramatic transformation, it is the single most
conservative emirate of all, austere, ascetic, policed by draconian
decency laws prohibiting alcohol, bars, late-night Internet cafes,
immodest dress, indecent speech, and the improper mixing of men and
women.

As such, Sharjah stands in the shadow of neighboring Dubai, where a
woman companion is easy to select. But just as Dubai’s audacious
architectural and financial development – proceeding at a pace of
global capitalism on potent speed – has been calibrated for the
foreseeable exhaustion of oil reserves, Sharjah’s restraint has a
strategic dimension.

In 1998 Unesco named Sharjah the “cultural capital” of the Arab
world. Sharjah’s ruler, Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed al-Qasimi, is
banking on the distinction by introducing an onslaught of
tourist-friendly arts initiatives and heritage preservations
projects. The biennial plays into that hand, but it may very well
prove to be a wild card.

The seventh outing at Sharjah is, more accurately, the second of its
kind. Prior to the last biennial, the sheikh’s daughter, Sheikha Hoor
al-Qasimi, returned home from art school in London and bashed the
event for being too traditional. Her father advised her to do
something about it, so she took over as director. The sixth edition
in 2003, curated by her and Peter Lewis (a lecturer at Goldsmith’s
College in London), was dramatically different from the previous
five.

With 117 artists from all over the world, including Christo and
William Kentridge (who won the biennial’s top prize), it was notably
more critical and cutting edge. Sharjah 6 was not without problems,
however, including organizational issues and instances of last-minute
censorship (political and sexual material was either obscured or
removed).

To a large extent, the same held true for Sharjah 7 (though in what
seems to be positive development, the political content, whether
subtle or strong, remained on view this year).

Persekian took over the curatorial duties after Sharjah’s first team
was dismissed. He had just six months to pull everything together. As
Lum suggests: “With such a compressed time frame it could have been a
disaster.”

In terms of actual artworks, the exhibition is anything but. Spread
across two spaces, the show is constructed so that viewers experience
each artist’s work individually and intimately, each in rooms of
their own. (The Sharjah Expo Center is the size of an airplane hanger
and for this event, temporary walls have been erected to divide the
voluminous white space; the Sharjah Art Museum is designed like a
minimalist souk, with long corridors and a succession of boxy rooms
like refined market stalls.)

There are very few paintings or drawings on view but photography
makes an impressive showing and video art is plentiful enough to be
mind-numbing.

Sculptures and object-based installations are judiciously few, making
those that are on display here, such as Emily Jacir’s baggage claims
conveyor belt and Zoe Leonard’s arrangement of vintage suitcases, all
the more powerful in their visual and spatial punch.

Among the highlights are Fouad Elkoury’s luscious and nasty series of
photographs, “Civilization: Fake = Real;” Tarek al-Ghoussein’s spare
scenes of Sharjah’s construction sites, printed on rice paper and
installed in such a way that sparks a clear association between these
photographs and images of the barrier wall Israel is building in
Palestine; Mohammed Kazem’s evocative light-boxes illuminating the
ways in which the emirates are being built on the blood and sweat of
a foreign workforce; the first in Suha Shoman’s double-barreled
installation; Jayce Salloum’s visually and intellectually rich
dual-screen video “Beauty and the East”; and Marwan Rechmaoui’s
stately, interactive “Beirut Caoutchouc,” a huge rubber floor piece
that will soon enter the collection of the Sharjah Art Museum.

The biennial’s three prize winners were selected by a jury featuring
artist and writer Walid Sadek, blockbuster curator Okwui Enwezor (who
was responsible for the last groundbreaking Documenta), and Rina
Carvajal (the head curator of a new museum called Art Miami Central).
They opted to hand out the awards equally rather than ranked (the
Sharjah Biennial is somewhat unique in that it offers cash instead of
prestige prizes; in this case each winning artist received $10,000,
which, of course, is no chump change).

Maja Bajevic won for a somber series of photographs depicting
Christmas lights in a bleak Bosnian landscape, an attempt to recover
some semblance of normalcy in adhering to an international calendar,
even when the holidays don’t apply and the street lights lead down a
dead-end road.

Mario Rizzi won for his exuberant six-screen video installation
entitled “Out of Place (Images Deracine),” exploring the experiences
of second generation immigrants in Paris, a work that is well-paced,
moving, and masterfully mixed.

And finally, Moataz Nasr won for his trenchant video work “The Echo,”
which is structured like a dialogue between two screens, one
projecting a classic scene from Youssef Chahine’s film “Al-Ard” (The
Earth), the other projecting a re-enactment of the same scene by
Egyptian storyteller Chirine al-Ansary in a downtown Cairo coffee
shop.

In addition to the main exhibition spaces, the Sharjah Biennial was
meant to include a number of public art projects, an initiative that
was basically scrapped because of logistic and technical issues.
Pinpointing meaningful examples of public space is difficult in
Sharjah. What’s more, says Lum, “Here it’s hard to compete with the
extreme piety of public space. We already knew it would be a
restriction.”

“We tried our best to invite every artist ahead of time,” adds
Persekian. “We wanted artists to have this opportunity and we tried.
Some did. Not all of them could.”

The most striking – and probably the most enduring – thing about the
seventh edition of Sharjah is this: the biennial produced nearly 20
new and original bodies of work.

Artists such as Yu Hong, Nari Ward, Olaf Nicolai, Elkoury, Rizzi,
Bajevic, and many more were able to produce as part of the Sharjah
program.

The place, at present, may have no viable art public, no local
audience, and no mechanisms for critical discourse. But it does have
the potential to operate as a sort of independent laboratory or
isolated think tank – a place to create work and perhaps find the
right words to raise questions.

“The biennial does not present any answers. We don’t have any
answers. It’s more of a discussion,” says Persekian. “All the
questions about how this relates to local society, what would it mean
to a taxi driver, to someone who came for a job – to me that means
that whatever you do here, it has to open up a space for
a conversation.”

Sharjah Biennial 7 remains open through June 6. For more information,
check out