The Biennale of Sydney has announced that Hoor Al Qasimi, the president and director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, will be the artistic director for its 2026 edition.
Al Qasimi is the daughter of the Emir of Sharjah, Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi.
She has been the director of the Sharjah Biennial since 2002, and is also the artistic director of the sixth Aichi Triennale (2025) in Japan.
In Sydney for the announcement, Al Qasimi told The Art Newspaper she has been visiting the Sydney Biennale for ten years.
“It's one of the biennials I try not to miss,” she said. “Sydney's so multicultural, so the whole world is in Sydney, in a way.”
The 2026 Biennale of Sydney will be the 25th edition. The current biennial curated by Cosmin Costinaş and Inti Guerrero closes on 10 June.
Al Qasimi said her focus was not on attracting international visitors to the Biennale of Sydney but more on providing an “urgent” and engaging event for the city’s 5.2 million residents.
“When I took over the Sharjah Biennial, I said for me it's not about tourism, it's not about international visitors, it's about the local visitors,” she said.
“For me, those are the audiences that are going to come every weekend. They will bring their families. People don't have to just see everything on one visit. They can just take their time and make a weekend out of one site and spend time, and if they're children it becomes part of their childhood or youth and they remember it.”
Al Qasimi said she still remembers attending the Sharjah Biennial as a child. She loved to stay behind at school and paint. She later attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London, finding her artistic skills of great use as a curator.
“A lot of times I work with artists and they say, ‘because you're an artist you understand where I'm coming from’,” she said. “So there is a way of working that is rewarding because I feel like it's giving me so much more than if I was just focusing on my own practice.”
The Biennale of Sydney was one of the world’s first biennials, and this gives it a special standing that Al Qasimi hopes to emphasise through her role as artistic director.
“I hope that I can bring something that could have an after-life. Not just an exhibition that comes to an end, but something that makes a difference,” she said.
Al Qasimi said it was important to understand the evolution of any given biennial, and noted the increasing inclusion of First Nations and international art in the Sydney event.