Inside the darkened hall of an old vegetable market in Sharjah this spring was a domed wooden structure: a scaled-down replica of the US Capitol building, turned instead into a wire-mesh chicken coop. The artist collective and ‘progressive academy’ Sakiya, founded in 2016 by artist and ACT Professor Nida Sinnokrot and architect Sahar Qawasmi, might have contributed quite an iconic sculpture for their participation in the Sharjah Biennial, but their work, based in the hills outside Ramallah, is more focused on how the functional and quotidian can work through any claims to power. The group’s activities, at their site in the village of Ein Qiniya, have entailed several years of rewilding the landscape and renovating the historical buildings there, including a twelfth-century shrine, alongside residencies, summer schools, regular workshops on olive field management, film screenings and discussion events, exhibitions and public art interventions. While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has limited visits by international collaborators, which in the past have included the likes of Cooking Sections, the group continues its model of grassroots organization as art.
About the Art Review Power 100:
The Power 100 is ArtReview’s annual portrait of power in the artworld. It is an attempt to describe the individuals and groups that have shaped what art has been seen and how it has been seen over the past 12 months (broadly speaking, the calendar year). And yes, that is an indication that ArtReview views the artworld as, essentially, a social structure: a network of relationships that are triggered by the actions of individuals. Although within that you might also argue that different understandings of the network are what triggers the actions. But that could get complicated. And ArtReview’s list exists as a simplification. The point really is that ArtReview doesn’t regard the artworld as a purely economic system (which collectors bought the most expensive art, which galleries sold the most expensive art, which artists made the most expensive art, which museums showed the most expensive art), or an aesthetic one (which art ArtReview and its power panel like the most).
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