14 March – 14 June 2026

\White Bay Power Station, Chau Chak Wing Museum, AGNSW, MCA, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Penrith Regional Gallery, in addition to many other venues across the City.

Review by Anthony Frater. Arts Wednesday.

The Sydney Biennale is on once again and what an absolute triumph it is for CEO Barbara Moore and her team for bringing it all to fruition. I say this because amid the joy and pleasure the controversy leading up to its opening had been, one imagines, full of stops and starts and a pretty rough ride.

It’s the appointment of world renowned Artistic Director and curator, Hoor Al Qassimi, that has created more than just a fuss with the usual suspects out baying for blood, in this case Royal blood, a Princess’s blood in fact. From Sharjah, one of the 7 emirates of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi (Director of the Sharjah Art Foundation) took the top spot in Art Review’s 2024/25 Power 100 list, ranking her the most influential figure in contemporary art for her impact on biennial culture and global art.

Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme: Until we became fire and fire us; 2023-ongoing (detail)

Earning her reputation through hard work, passion and a tireless ability to get things done, she is quick to point out that she is not here to defend herself or antagonise anyone but to simply do her job. Hoor’s appointment meant that a number of long-term Biennale advocates, let’s say donors, withdrew all support, one assumes financial support, (isn’t that what lobby groups do, use money to exert control and power in an attempt to get their way, or threaten withdrawal of funds if things don’t go their way) not that it mattered because the funding for this years Biennale is at a record high.

And on it went and so on it goes. A former Biennale board member, Morry Schwartz, resigned his position (or was he pushed?) a few months before the Sheikha’s appointment. Schwartz went on to tell a prominent Australian publication, “if Hoor Al Qassimi and her cohort push it too far, and turn it into a hate-Israel jamboree, it will have abandoned its purpose and its moral right to exist. It could be the end”. Of course that hasn’t happened but the implication seems that without his band of like minded fellows and followers and the control and oversight they would bring to bare, there could not possibly be a worthwhile Biennale; further and in the same piece it was reported that The Executive Council of Australian Jewry weighed in, they condemned “her appointment as another example of a flagship cultural institution captured by an extremist anti-western political agenda”.

We’ve heard this kind of petulant rhetoric before, time and time again, nonetheless, blatant racism, gross hypocrisy, projection and ethnocentrism aside – all of which stifles and is the antithesis of any form of art and should not be allowed any where near it – the irony of course is that these attempts at censorship and cancellation eerily echo many of the stories on display throughout the exhibition. A case of life imitating art!

But it’s time to let the art speak for itself. This year’s Sydney Biennale is set to be a visual challenge as is Contemporary Art’s remit – at times bewilderingly so – but also an immersive thought provoking experience, an adventure, a safe way to get out of your comfort zone and experience what it means to be alive, and with this year’s theme, experience the foundation of our humanity through storytelling and its visual interpretation.

This year’s theme is entitled Rememory: an exploration of how memory and our own history informs who, what and where we might be now. Even our external world, the environment, plays a part in our evolution, as does all the trials and tribulations of our lives: war, peace, incarceration, colonial abuse and more. My story is yours and yours mine, one cannot really exist without influencing the other’s development – or at least it shouldn’t. It is a collective conscious: that which affects one affects us all. This idea that I’m not responsible for what might have happened decades or even centuries ago is put in a box where it belongs, a death mask, and rightfully so. We are responsible because in the here and now change can be affected and make what might have gone wrong then, right now; it’s about taking responsibility, courage and substance to own up.

Ema Shin: Hearts of Absent Women (Tree of Family) 2026

The festival also plays with time. Time is not linear, it does not necessarily move in one direction, theoretically it might but in reality it shifts, moves back and forwards, our minds can be in the present, past or future – we choose; for example, ritual and ceremony that might be thousands of years old, might still be performed now, in the present, or, we imagine our future and act in a way today in order to achieve our imagined goals and dreams. It all means our past and our future continues to inform and guide the present.

More than 150 artists from 37 countries showcasing their work in over 13 exhibition spaces all over the city, this is an all inclusive event, making it possible for people from all socio-economic backgrounds, interests and motivations to view works that will not likely be very far from where they live, and it’s all free.

Wether it’s Warraba Weatherall’s work, Setting Sun, at theChau Chak Wing Museum: an ongoing meditation upon the collecting practices of the modern museum. How does the museum come to be in possession of the object; how was it acquired; is the object’s full story being told and how can it possibly be, given how it might have been acquired; was it an abusive colonial power that ensured the object became theirs, or, common theft; and should it be returned to its owners. Or Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s work at the Campbelltown Arts Centre, a work entitled Until we became fire and fire us 2023-ongoing: a gripping story of war and repression, exile and displacement, it’s a multi screened audio visual tour de force, a sensorial overload that must be experienced and felt – this work really is a Biennale highlight. Or the Ngurrara Canvas II at the AGNSW: a massive, 80-square-metre (8m x 10m) floor painting created in 1997 by over 40 artists from the Ngurrara people of Western Australia’s Great Sandy Desert. Only 5 of those artists are still alive. It was designed as a monumental map to prove their traditional ownership and connection to their ancestral lands during native title claims. Its presentation at this years Bienalle is described as being the final time the canvas will be exhibited away from its home in the Kimberley before returning there permanently – so it’s a case of see it while you can, and you really absolutely must.

Rememory and what we take out of its meaning to the 25th Sydney Biennale is in many ways something about an ideal, stories of memory and history – dreams of oneness and unity. It’s Biennale, let’s make it about the art, celebrate the incredible work of its Artistic Director, Hoor Al Quassimi, and of course the participating artists.

The 25th Sydney Biennale is on from the 14 March to 14 June 2026.

Listen to a Biennale overview from CEO Barbara Moore below: