This exhibition is a provocation. It seeks to show how material culture can be reimagined through the lenses of artists whose political agency, activism and astute observations encourage us to extend the limits of our beliefs. It considers how economies have formed around technological culture, how narrative is created and deconstructed, and how these forces of change enable a reconstitution, or indeed a restitution, of a history lost or even unknown. Drifting in and out of hegemonies and entrenched structures of power, here the sensorial and the bodily intertwine, becoming archaeological sediments in the landscape of Sharjah and imploring viewers to consider their complicity in a world that is forever slipping away.

* new commissions

Lawrence Abu Hamdan *
Cory Arcangel *
Marwa Arsanios *
Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck *
Semiha Berksoy
Candice Breitz *
Huguette Caland
Ian Cheng *
Shezad Dawood *
Stan Douglas *
Lubaina Himid
Alfredo Jaar *
Ann Veronica Janssens *
Barbara Kasten
Astrid Klein
Marwan
Otobong Nkanga with Emeka Ogboh *
Bruno Pacheco *
Heather Phillipson *
Jon Rafman *
Michael Rakowitz
Pamela Rosenkranz *
Hrair Sarkissian *
Anwar Jelal Shemza
Kemang Wa Lehulere *
Munem Wasif *
Akram Zaatari *