Eungie Joo Announced As Curator of Sharjah Biennial

Eungie Joo has been announced as curator of the 12th edition of the Sharjah Biennial, which opens in March 2015. Previously the Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Programs at the New Museum in New York City and presently the Director of Art and Cultural Programs at Instituto Inhotim in Brazil, Joo has led a career “focused on working closely with artists and communities.” The president of the Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF), Sheikha Hoor al-Qasimi, hopes that her collaborative perspective “will find resonance in Sharjah.”

Joo’s appointment brings the Biennial closer to its goal of promoting both “public learning and a participatory approach to art.” In 2012, “The Ungovernables” exhibition she curated at the New Museum was highly lauded for its inclusion of artists embodying a spirit of resistance and disobedience. For the Biennial, her proclivity for thinking outside the confines of the art world will be called upon once more as participants will be asked to consider how the position of speaker, thinker or creator helps foster “new possibilities for social organization and ways to transcend cultural and political boundaries.”

Joo has described Sharjah as “a very special place that calls you back again and again.” During her time there, she hopes to develop “a meaningful conversation with artists and cultural practitioners.”