Sharjah Art Foundation has named over 60 artists to its list of participants in the upcoming Sharjah Biennial 13 (SB13), titled “Tamawuj.”

In Arabic, tamawuj has multiple definitions: the rising and falling of waves, surging or fluctuation, or a wavy, shifting appearance. As a title, it is meant to invoke the Biennial’s many collaborations with other regional organizations.

Christine Tohme, director of Ashkal Alwan, the Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, is curating the exhibition, which runs from March 10–June 12, 2017.

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Tohme, who believes in a less strictly-defined institutional identity built on interacting with other organizations, is expanding the biennial to four different sites throughout the region, each of which will create artistic programming in response to a different key word.

Christine Tohme. Courtesy of Tarek Moukaddem.

First up is Dakar, Senegal, where, on January 8–9, 2017, the first off-site project, a workshop led by artist Kader Attia at Cheikh Anta Diop University, will be based on water. On May 13, 2017, curator Zeynep Öz will devise a program about crops in Istanbul. Curator Lara Al Khalidi will engage with the concept of earth in the West Bank city of Ramallah on August 20, 2017. The final stop will be October 17, 2017, in Beirut, Lebanon, where Tohme’s own Ashkal Alwan space will address the word culinary.

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The idea is to create a flowing exchange of knowledge and ideas throughout the region, tapping into the multiple meanings of tamawuj, and build on the biennial’s yearlong educational program, SB13 School, which launched in October.

“I look forward to seeing how this collaborative program builds connections with our partners and local infrastructures—and how the participating artists respond to and connect to Sharjah,” wrote Sheikha Hoor Bint Sultan Al Qasimi, the foundation’s president and director, in an email to artnet News.

The 2015 edition was curated by Eungie Joo, and saw American filmmaker Eric Baudelaire, Spanish multimedia artist Asunción Molinos Gordo, and Palestinian multimedia collaborators Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme. Argentinian sculptor Adrián Villar Rojas and Turkish multimedia artist Fahrelnissa Zeid take home top honors.

Here are the participating artists: 
Noor Abuarafeh
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Abbas Akhavan
Tamara Al Samerraei
Allora & Calzadilla
Maria Thereza Alves
Kader Attia
Tonico Lemos Auad
Ismaïl Bahri
Sarnath Banerjee
Yto Barrada
Abdelkader Benchamma
Ursula Biemann and Paulo Tavares
Dineo Seshee Bopape
Jonathas de Andrade
Mariana Castillo Deball
Roy Dib
Vikram Divecha
Barış Doğrusöz
Koo Donghee
İnci Eviner
Em’kal Eyongakpa
Harun Farocki
Fehras Publishing Practices
Future Farmers
Daniele Genadry
Deniz Gul
Shadi Habib Allah
Taloi Havini
Takashi Ishida
İz Öztat and Fatma Belkıs Işık
Lamia Joreige
Christoph Keller
Samir Khaddaj
Mahmoud Khaled
Nesrine Khodr
Basim Magdy
Metahaven
Hind Mezaina
Mochu
Oscar Murillo
Joe Namy
Uriel Orlow
The Otolith Group
Christodoulos Panayiotou
Khalil Rabah
Jon Rafman
Raqs Media Collective
Stéphanie Saadé
Abdullah Al Saadi
Natascha Sadr Haghighian
Ghassan Salhab
Roy Samaha
Massinissa Selmani
Setareh Shahbazi
Nida Sinnokrot
Walid Siti
Monika Sosnowska
Zhou Tao
Mario García Torres
Jorinde Voigt
James Webb
Rain Wu and Eric Chen
Paola Yacoub
Fathi Zamroud

The Sharjah Biennial 13 is on view March 10–June 12, 2017, with the March Meeting opening events taking place March 10–14, 2017.