Sharjah Biennial launches the Production Programme as a vehicle for the realisation of artists' projects

The launch of the Sharjah Biennial Productions Programme is a timely experiment that will explore the shifting spectrum of creative practice and try to identify marginal processes of thoughts, relations and acts arising from art and its vicinities.

"Now and after we've made some headway with regard to the Sharjah Biennial's positioning, recognition and credibility, we're ready to embark on a new and daring plan to break free from the traditional genealogy of biennials, and open the doors to long-term engagements with artists and practitioners, commissioning productions and spearheading creative endeavors," Jack Persekian, Artistic Director, Sharjah Biennial.

This programme is a natural extension to the Biennial's work in progress, which has so far charted unprecedented territories for the propagation of art in the region and beyond, and is determined to remain the artists' vehicle for the realisation of their projects.

This step also comes in light of the Sharjah Biennial's endeavor to find new possibilities for production of art in the Arab world, expand and facilitate encounters among art practitioners as well as to assist artists and encourage collaborations with other institutions.

The Biennial envisages its pioneering role as an intellectual hub, stemming from its long history of dedicated and committed support to the development of art and the expansion of the horizon of possibilities and capabilities for productions and presentations. Its position at the international art circuit cross roads enabled it to expand on its legacy and promote interaction by periodically organizing opportunities between artists, producers, curators, commissioners, sponsors, collectors and museum experts from all around the world. The Sharjah Biennial will be eventually composing with every organized encounter, meeting, exhibition and production the bigger picture of what a biennial ought to be about.

Sharjah Biennial aims not to pose as the locus of your dreams but to adapt rather, to your dream of a locus.

Empowered by this vision, the Sharjah Biennial is reaching out to all artists and non-artists to submit their ideas and proposals, and collectively venture on joint production projects with the biennial slated for its coming ninth edition in March 2009.