Unsettled Objects

This exhibition guide documents the recent and rarely seen acquisitions from Sharjah Art Foundation’s holdings. The show derives its title from Lothar Baumgarten’s featured artwork, Unsettled Objects (1968–1969), a slide-carousel projection filmed in Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum.

The artists featured in Unsettled Objects work in a variety of mediums across a broad expanse of time. They explore concepts of mapping and archaeology, of memory and selfhood, of sight and absence. As the title suggests, their art unsettles our understanding of history by proposing that art has the potential to encourage a contoured view of a collective and inclusive society.

The Sharjah Art Foundation Collection is anchored by acquisitions and commissions from more than two decades of the Sharjah Biennial, the Foundation’s year-round exhibitions and other core commissioning programmes. It has since grown into a distinctive collection, enriching the lives of audiences through both local and international exhibitions of significant works of modern and contemporary art. A public collection encompassing a diverse body of more than 1300 works, the Collection spans art movements from the 1920s to the present day in an ever-expanding range of art forms and visual culture.