Counterhegemonic generative AI is a fantasy […] Materially, they are dependent on arrangements established by colonialism and the ongoing concentration of wealth and intellectual resources in the hands of very few men; ideologically they require increasing alienation and the elimination of difference. At best, these experiments offer us a pale reflection of intellectual engagement and collective social life. At worst, they contribute to the destruction of diverse communities and the very conditions for the solidarity required for real resistance.

This sixteenth edition of the Sharjah Biennial—curated by Natasha Ginwala, Amal Khalaf, Zeynep Öz, Alia Swastika, and Megan Tamati-Quennell—foregrounds on work that is firmly grounded in its cultural contexts and unambiguous in its ethical commitments. But it is less clear that all of them triumph on their own terms as sculptures, videos, installations, or any of the other aesthetic strategies through which it is possible “to carry”—as the exhibition’s title puts it—ideas, principles, and feelings across the borders separating people, communities, and cultures.

The first striking thing about the work in “Electric Dreams” is how much of it is solid, physically insistent, handmade or drawn, not dramatically departing, in material or form or modes of display, from mid-century conventions in painting and sculpture. In the context of this show, some of the early works can appear quaintly mechanical instead of digital. But they appeal to an idea of the programmed machine.

Radha D’Souza outlined five foundational liberal fictions: the nature-people divide; the two-faced state comprising democracy and security; the fallacy of legal personhood, by which a corporation has the same rights as a natural person; and the idea that science and technology will solve all the world’s problems. D’Souza’s fifth myth was in fact a truth: as Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels once said, good propaganda should never lie but “decide what to tell and what not to tell.”

An ongoing strand of Serapinas’s practice involves acquiring and pulling apart dilapidated log-and-shingle buildings, reconfiguring and sometimes charring the scavenged materials, then presenting them in exhibition spaces. Examples of this architectural vernacular survive from as long ago as the nineteenth century in Lithuania as well as over the border in Poland and Belarus.

Asher, who died in 2012, may seem like one of the drier conceptual artists of his generation. His work was usually temporary and survives largely through documents and writing. His most famous pieces involved removing the front wall of a gallery or rebuilding every temporary wall ever installed in a museum. Yet a current survey at Artists Space, despite comprising mostly ephemera including printed matter, notes, and schematics (such as architectural plans for the Grinstein’s modified wall), captures the humor that made Asher so influential.

As the shortlisted artists and curators for the Australian Pavillion at the 2026 Venice Biennale, we are writing in support of the winning team; Khaled Sabsabi (artist) and Michael Dagostino (curator), selected by industry led experts through a rigorous and professionally independent open-call process.
Prospecting Ocean


