Wet Matters is one of the publications in the YAZ Publication Series, curated by Merve Yücel. The publication explores how water unsettles the boundaries between land and sea, human and non-human, and asks how we might approach these environments not as passive settings, but as active and contested spaces. With contributions from three artists, the book brings together varied practices that engage with the social, historical, and ecological dimensions of watery worlds.
Sonia Levy’s project, developed in dialogue with a text by Filipa Ramos, engages with Venice and its lagoon from below. Together, the film stills and the text trace a more-than-human cinema, one that emerges from muddy waterscapes, reframing histories of control through gestures of attention, relation and resistance.
This event highlights curator Zeynep Öz’s YAZ Publications which forms part of her contribution to Sharjah Biennial 16. The conception and development of this series and its exhibitions have frequently overlapped, with some publications transforming into spatial commissions or leaving imprints within the exhibitions, though these connections have often been indirect and nonlinear. The publication series as well as the larger project contemplates on the shifts in societal and economic systems we experience in the present day, specifically those in response to the later stages of the accelerated changes in technology and science.
Sharjah Biennial 16
The sixteenth edition of Sharjah Biennial (SB16) convenes under the title to carry, a multivocal and open-ended proposition. The ever-expanding list of what to carry, and how to carry it, is an invitation to encounter the different formations and positions of the five curators – Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Ginwala and Zeynep Öz, as well as the constellation of resonances they have gathered.
SB16 features the works by more than 190 participants, including over 200 new commissions. Running until 15 June 2025, the biennial activates venues in Sharjah City, Al Hamriyah, Al Dhaid, Kalba, Al Madam and other locations across the Emirate of Sharjah.
