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The “Fairennial” Shift:Art Fairs, Biennials,and theGreat Exhibition(s)Lately it feels like all the world's an art fair.S. Prickett 1 TEXT / STEPHANIE BAILEYThe Sharjah Biennial began in 1993, when itwas conceived along the lines of the CairoBiennale (modeled on the Venice Biennale, withnational pavilions). But it was held in the ExpoCentre, and thus had the look and feel of a tradefair, with individual booths rather than pavilions.This story of the Sharjah Biennial’s genesisvisualizes the relationship between two verydifferent global art events: the conceptuallyinclined biennial exhibition and the marketdrivenart fair.In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), this relationshipis made most apparent as both ArtDubai and the Sharjah Biennial open annuallyin March. In their time-based and geographicalproximity, they have become spaces where theissues and debates around the cultural implicationsof globally appropriating the art fair andbiennial formats are heightened due to a certainregional specificity. In 2011, for instance,Art Dubai and Sharjah Biennial 10 becameembroiled in the politics of the Arab revolutionswhile simultaneously dealing with criticismfrom the international community over censorshiptaking place during both the SharjahBiennial and Art Dubai. As a result, art as a formof cultural diplomacy and issues of cultural relativismthat came to the fore in the 2012Sharjah March Meeting, an annual global conferenceorganized by the Sharjah Art Foundation(which runs the Sharjah Biennial), just ascensorship once again ruffled feathers at ArtDubai.Tellingly, the 2013 iterations of Art Dubai andthe Sharjah Biennial enacted a recalibrationbased on the lessons of the past, using the artfair and biennial––Western exhibition models––to assert an autonomous, albeit global, identityin a post-colonial, post-crisis, and post-ArabSpring context, and within the 21st-centuryremit of “globalization.” Through these spaces, acertain “fairennial shift” took place: a reflectionof how the proliferation of art fairs and biennialsin the last decade, which has taken placepredominately outside of the Western world, isproducing a new kind of global paradigm.Sharjah Biennial 11, Re:Emerge, Towards a NewCultural Cartography [March 13– May 13, 2013], isa case in point. Making a conceptually bold yetaesthetically understated statement, curatorYuko Hasegawa presented a manifesto for a“Global South,” invoking a desire for culturalemancipation from the West that has longgripped regions of Africa, Asia, and the Arabworld. The approach took into account the ethnicdiversity of the UAE (80% migrant and expatriate)while maintaining an expansive, globaloutlook.Meanwhile, at Art Dubai 2013’s Global ArtForum, two telling discussions took place. Thefirst, a panel chaired by author Oscar Guardiola-Rivera. It featured Payam Sharifi from the artcollective Slavs and Tatars, cultural commentatorSultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, and anthropologistUzma Z. Rizvi, who discussed the viabilityof the use of the acronyms “Mena” (Middle Eastand North Africa), “Menasa” (plus South Asia),and “Menasaca” (plus Central Asia) to describea disparate, geographical area widely known as“the Region.” The second discussion, chaired byTuri Munthe, founder of “citizen journalist”newswire Demotix, examined “free zones” (FreeTrade Zone, Foreign Trade Zone, SpecialEconomic Zone, Export Processing Zone)⎯aconcept that architect Keller Easterling definesas “a highly contagious and globalized urbanform” or extrastatecraft, a “portmanteau wordmeaning outside of and in addition to the managementof state affairs.” 2Against the backdrop of contemporary Arabmodernity (or “Gulf Futurism” as Sophia Al-Maria calls it), discussions taking place via ArtDubai and the Sharjah Biennial around theinstrumentalization of art and culture outsidethe West reflect a 21st-century global condition.It is affected by the historical ideologies aroundglobalism and its neoliberal effects. In AbuDhabi, the UAE’s capital, there is the controversialSaadiyat Cultural District, complete withoutposts of The Guggenheim, The Louvre, andNew York University currently in development.The project has been the focal point for protestsagainst workers’ rights in the UAE and hasraised questions over the import of global artinstitutions––arguably apparatuses of neoliberalglobalism––into a region.In this light, Easterling’s notion of the “freezone” is pertinent in the art fair and biennialcontext. It evokes another idea Easterlingintroduced: the “spatial product”⎯a semiautonomous(often replicable) trade zone like acruise ship or a holiday resort that similarlyoperates outside of the state and its jurisdictions.Today, art fairs and biennials could bewell defined as “free zones” and “spatial prod-OPPOSITE: Maryam Jafri, Malaysia-Ghana-India 1947–1957, from the photo installation Independence Day 1936–1967, 2009–present (courtesy of the artist)32 ART PAPERS