A publication project for Sharjah Biennial 11 and commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation, The Dialogue That Is Us by Tony Chakar presents a dystopic ‘emblem book’. In seventeenth century Europe, ‘emblem books’ were quite common, and they mainly spoke of the end of things, of a failed world and its defeats. This publication takes emblem books as its point of departure: from the wreckage of history, images are seized and transformed into allegories that illuminate the present of a world (the Arab World) that did not produce them.

The narrative is divided into twenty one sections accompanied by drawings created by Ali Eyal which are based on existing photographs and paintings.