‘Expanding The Mandate,’ an interview with Jack Persekian - May/June 2009
Changing the face of any biennial is no simple matter. Recently Jack Persekian, artistic director of the Sharjah Biennial, spoke with Asian Art News’s Jonathan Thompson about new directions for the Biennial.
Jonathan Thompson: Were there any problems that you inherited with the Sharjah Biennial that were difficult to solve?
Jack Persekian: Yes, many. The most important was the format of a biennial. Not just the Sharjah Biennial but all biennials. We should not take it for granted that a biennial will happen every two years, that it will have a theme and a curator or curators who choose artists and artworks. The beauty of a biennial is that it is free from the market and does not have to come eventually to a bottom line. As we do not have this limitation, we can do whatever we like. So we needed to try to re-question and to reconstruct all of these parameters that we had somehow given ourselves.
The questions that we had to address very quickly were: Why do we have a biennial? What is the reason for the biennial? Why in Sharjah? What does it do? How can it be more than just a vitrine, a display of artwork? How can it expand its resources and networking possibilities to different parts of the community? The Biennial’s mandate comes from a strategic decision of the Government of Sharjah to work with education. How does it help expand this mandate?
JT: Was the commissioning and production program a part of your response?
JP: It was one part of it. If I look and see who is supporting art and artists, who is giving means, facilities, resources, and know-how to artists in this region, in the Arab world, then I can count them on the fingers of one hand. The Sharjah Biennial does have these sorts of resources and needs to use them to create a kind of refuge for artists.
The commissioning and production program is an on-going thing. It is not just about making work. We see it in terms of how it relates to the other reasons why we have a biennial and how it becomes a conduit through which we connect with other places. We need to create a certain balance between here and elsewhere. The commissioning and production program, the exhibition itself, the performance and film program and the March Meeting were all a part of our response.
JT: Much of the work was made specifically for Sharjah. Are there any key issues that you see the artists engaging with?
JP: I have been asking myself this question but I do not want to frame the show with a one-liner or with a linear narrative. I have brainwashed myself into not dealing with frames or admitting that there are issues that run through the different exhibits. What I want is for art historians and critics and others to go through the exhibition and to create their own different narratives and different perspectives on the show and to see where all the different threads may be connecting. I hate the idea of telling people what to see in the work
JT: So it is not a matter of you as artistic director imposing your view on the show?
JP: I wanted the show to be Untitled, as a title. I wanted to resist talking about how the pressing issues of today are somehow being represented by this work or by that artist. There is superficiality in this approach and this is why I have given up on the idea of a theme.
JT: We see this in other biennials where the artistic director imposes an agenda on the exhibition?
JP: To tell you the truth I do impose my agenda, but my agenda is to deconstruct the givens, to deconstruct the set norms that we were working with. What I did not want was to start by thinking about the Biennial in terms of a theme. I did not want us to sit around and decide, for example, that the theme is wars, and then let’s see which works represent wars, let’s line them up one after the other and say to the public, “now you can come to the show and see war.”
JT: How is the working relationship with Isabel Carlos, as curator of the exhibition? How do you manage separate agendas?
JP: The relationship is great. I have been here a long time and of course she is here for just one edition and has to bring her own views and beliefs. But the way I have challenged us all is to say, “let’s start with the applications to the production program and not from the list of artists we all carry with us in our address books.”
I know that this or that artist would make a great piece for the show but I don’t want to start there, I want to start with those who applied and many of these were unknown, to me, and I am sure to Isabel. By starting with the applications we were not judging on the basis of what we knew about these artists but on the quality of the project.
JT: How does the Biennial expand its reach?
JP: The exhibition itself runs for two months and in that time education is a key part of our work. We have a day-trip program in which school and university groups are bussed into Sharjah to spend time with the art and us.
The other thing for us is that which happens between one biennial and another. The March Meeting is an annual event in which we invite and bring together art institutions from within the Arab world to discuss issues that are important to us. It is a simple concept.
The Biennial is a platform for artists and art, and art fairs, such as Art Dubai, are a platform for commercial galleries and the market. But there is not any platform for the people in the institutions and the not-for-profit agencies that are behind the artists and the art. We want to create a critical mass of people who help to make art happen but are always on the sidelines.
Reprinted with kind permission of Asian Art News. Copyright (c) Asian Art Press (International) Limited 2009.
