While archeological research confirms the presence of humans in the region over 125,000 years ago, Sharjah —as a city, an emirate and a member of a relatively young federation— is still in the process of imagining itself through education, culture, religion, heritage and science.

As the emirate’s future history is written through urban development, heritage-site restoration, interdependent transnational economies and a diverse everyday culture, Sharjah Biennial 12: The past, the present, the possible invited fifty-one artists and groups to help imagine and reflect upon its ambitions, possibilities and being. A biennial can be a dynamic structure for such considerations, and SB12 embraced this provisional format with a focus on timely experimentation from present and past. Mobilising a host of new commissions and works juxtaposed with an ahistorical wealth of abstraction, The past, the present, the possible signaled a distrust of narrative certitude in favour of unexpected simultaneities and potential alliances.

Regarding the title, curator Eungie Joo said in an interview with Gerhard Haupt & Pat Binder: "It comes from a sentence in The Right to the City by Henri Lefebvre, 'The past, the present, the possible cannot be separated', but the idea for the Biennial came before I read the essay. It just matched the sentiment well. What Lefebvre is writing about in his approach to the city is very much related to what contemporary artists are thinking about right now—there is some kind of crossover in the way he puts everything in the present. One of the things that I thought about not only for Sharjah, but for the greater region usually called the Middle East and for the world, is how do we deal with history, how do we respect history, even share information about it, without being burdened by history, where we can’t move."
See the interview

The seventh annual March Meeting (MM) in 2014 was conceived by SB12 curator Eungie Joo as an integral part of the Sharjah Biennial 2015.

MM 2014 coincided with individual exhibitions by Ahmed Mater, Eduard Puterbrot, Abdullah Al Saadi (opened in February 2014), Rasheed Araeen, Susan Hefuna, and Wael Shawky (inaugurated in March 2014), as well als the March Project, featuring new commissions by early career artists. All these exhibitions were curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, President and Director of the Sharjah Art Foundation.

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