The second book in the Provisions series looks at the experience of taking part in and attending a biennial. A series of commissions from visiting writers, artists, and staff members, the result is a comprehensive diary written during the opening week of the Biennial.

The text contributions vary wildly: musings on the day before the show opened, and the messy, sleepless process of making work to deadline, a discursive, emailed exchange-as-critique, a consideration of connections between the distinctive smells of the Emirate and childhood memory and, for one writer in Ramallah, a biennial extracted from the corridors of his imagination and set against the checkpoints of his return journey to Sharjah.

In addition to the writings, artists were invited to submit contributions that reflected on the experience of making and exhibiting their work in Sharjah. The book also includes documentary images of the finished works on show in the Biennial.

Texts by Mahmoud Abu Hashah, Sophia Al-Maria, Ziad Antar, Basma Al Sharif, Shumon Basar, Isabel Carlos, Clare Davies, Mona El-Mousfy, Ayşe Erkmen, Sophie Ernst, Doug Henders, Fernando Jose Perreira, Yazan Khalili, Sherene Seikaly, Primoz Novak, Nika Oblak, Liliana Porter, Nida Sinnokrot, Ana Vidigal and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie.