In the Heart of Another Country explores the concept of home—of longing, belonging, and rootedness— tracing a travelogue through multiple underrepresented sites, histories, and geographies within the art historical canon.
15th July – 24th September 2023, Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE
28 October 2022 – 12 March 2023, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg
Drawing from the public collection of Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE, In the Heart of Another Country is an ongoing exhibition, publication and research project that began at Deichtorhallen Hamburg (28 October 2022 - 12 March 2023). In its first incarnation, a distinct architecture conceived with author and architect, Todd Reisz, transformed Deichtorhallen’s Hall of Contemporary Art into a cityscape. Here, the viewer negotiated a choreography through the architect’s lush colour schematic. More than 60 artists were presented with over 150 artworks in all media, many of which have rarely, if ever, been seen outside of their original context.
In summer 2023, a second incarnation took shape. Entitled, The Diasporic Imagination Rises, the sequel exhibition at Sharjah Art Foundation, was conceived by the exhibition’s curator as a homecoming—as a restorative act of resuscitation. One where language, colour, and form, could be dictated from within, forming a dialogue with Sharjah’s distinct architecture and its proximity to the sea. Divided into six chapters, each taking on the contour and shape of the Foundation’s galleries in Al Mureijah Square, the exhibition seeks to explore architecture and the salon; reclaimed portraits and wayward ethnography, as well as trace mapping and the illusion of cartography.
The artists in the exhibition have traversed migratory routes from South and West Asia, through Africa, and the Caribbean, and back again. Recently restored installations were presented alongside contemporary acquisitions, which narrate a communal story of kinship amongst artists—one often developed against a backdrop of political turmoil and social unrest. In the Heart of Another Country embodies Sharjah Art Foundation’s critical role in advancing a discourse for the ethnic Global Majority—a culturally situated space of and for art making.
Collectively, artists and curators have used Sharjah as a meeting point to forge dialogue. It has served as a connective tissue that nurtures a polyphonous and as inclusive a view of art history, as is possible within certain means.
In the Heart of Another Country explores human experience through the creative output of three generations of artists who hail from multiple geographies, sites, and histories, in an age of mobility.
The convergence within Sharjah, a port city in the UAE that extends across from the Arabian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman. Over the last 30 years, the Sharjah Biennial and since 2009, the Sharjah Art Foundation have functioned as a platform for artists who live or work in a geography that we once referred to as ‘the Global South’. The Foundation has accumulated an archive of contemporary thought and form generated by artists through commissions and exhibitions, performances and conversation, and its public collection of modern and contemporary art. These works endure an inter-textual record—a document of varied and collective histories, as well as propositions for the future.
Drawing inspiration from the late artist and author Etel Adnan’s landmark memoir, In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country (City Lights Books 2004) (inspired by William Gass’s 1968 collection), the exhibition charts sentiments of longing, memorial, homecoming and separation though a constellation of artworks that unfold across multitudinous borders, both real and imagined.
The principles of place and placeless-ness are explored through myriad art forms—from tessellating architectural structures and sensuous abstraction. These artworks are put into dialogue with maps that conceive of a restorative urban sphere.
The vanquished voice, a living archive, comes to life in harrowing investigations inside all-encompassing darkness. Through this gathering of stories, a sensorial choreography arises. In the Heart of Another Country lays plans for a re-imagining of context.
Whether on land, aboard ships, or through lived memory and experience—Home, in the end, is a proposition of becoming, of exploring the possibilities of being seen and heard.
In the Heart of Another Country is a project of the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection.
In the Heart of Another Country is organised by Deichtorhallen, Hamburg and Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE.
In the Heart of Another Country is curated by Dr Omar Kholeif, Director of Collections and Senior Curator, Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE.
A full colour publication co-published by Deichtorhallen and Snoeck is available from SAF stores as well as from Snoeck or from Deichtorhallen.
