The Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee has appointed Hoor Al Qasimi as Artistic Director of the sixth edition of the Aichi Triennale in Japan, which will take place in 2025. Al Quasimi founded the Sharjah Art Foundation in 2009, of which she remains president and director. Chosen for the strength of her global connections and vast experience in organizing biennials, she is the first non-Japanese person to lead the Triennale, considered Japan’s premier contemporary art exhibition, since its inception in 2010.
“I have a long history with Japan, its language, its culture, its artists and its curators,” Al Qasimi said in a statement, “and I am grateful to have the opportunity to work alongside many other professionals to learn more about Aichi”.
Among the major solo exhibitions that Al Qasimi has held at the Sharjah Art Foundation are those featuring the work of Tarek Atoui, Robert Breer, Amal Kenawy, Yayoi Kusama, Khalil Rabah, Hassan Sharif and the CAMP collective from Mumbai. Since 2017, she has been president of the International Biennial Association. Among the international biennials of which she has curated are the second Lahore Biennial, in 2020, and the United Arab Emirates pavilion at the fifty-sixth Venice Biennial, in 2015. She co-organized the sixth edition of the Biennial of Sharjah in 2003, and has since remained as event director. She is also President of the Africa Institute and Chair and Director of the Sharjah Architecture Triennale, the first edition of which was launched in 2019.
Al Qasimi is a board member of Kunst-Werke, Berlin and of Ashkal Alwan, Beirut. Previously, she served on the boards of MoMA PS1 in New York and the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing.
