SHARJAH.- Sharjah Art Foundation presents What should I do to live in your life?, a group exhibition introducing work by seven artists, all strangers to Sharjah and exhibiting in the UAE for the first time. The exhibition takes place in the historic building Bait Al Serkal, a space that was originally a family home. As the title of the exhibition, this question, to be posed reciprocally, opens the doors of this home and invites visitors to reflect on mutual understanding as a creative activity produced when thereʼs an engagement with unfamiliarity and transformation in exchanges with others and within our own mechanisms of adaptation. This exhibition features video documentations, projections and installations by Seoul and Hong Kong-based artists: Lee Kit, Minouk Lim, João Vasco Paiva, Part-time Suite (Miyeon Lee, Byungjae Lee and Jaeyoung Park) and Yuk King Tan.

The title, What should I do to live in your life?, is taken from a statement by Minouk Lim about the thoughts that occurred to her while making S.O.S. Adoptive Dissensus. This video, included in the exhibition, shows footage of a large-scale performance that Lim created and reflects upon the idea of mutual understanding and unfamiliarity. Focusing on how we can construct understanding from unfamiliarity this show proposes that exhibitions and the work they present can be experienced as environments. The works are presented throughout Bait Al Serkal as a way to encourage the audience to engage and respond to the space and the exhibited works as territories in their own right. This exhibition is curated by Claudia Pestana, Research and Experimentation Projects Curator at Sharjah Art Foundation.

In this exhibition over 32 works are presented. Collaborative group Part-time Suite is showcasing Drop by then: Raw Cast, a work that has been adapted for the local context in Sharjah. Hong Kong-based artist Yuk King Tan is presenting The Limit of Visibility, a new work that completes a series of three films including Scavenger and Drummer. Lee Kit is presenting two installations by combining existing works within two separate spaces at Bait Al Serkal. By being presented here in Sharjah, João Vasco Paivaʼs Palimpseptic, a 2011 series of works referencing the Hong Kong Metro, enters into a new dialogue between object and space: taken from spaces designed for mass transportation they now inhabit the private realm of a family home.

Claudia Pestana stated, “The premise for the exhibition is, when confronted with unfamiliarity, to ask: on what basis do we ground our ability to understand and engage with new circumstances? In this way, Bait Al Serkal functions as a home that invites exhibition visitors to engage with the multiple contexts offered by the works of these artists.

Artists & Works
Lee Kit (b. 1978, Hong Kong SAR) lives and works in Hong Kong. Solo exhibitions of his work include Lee Kit: Henry (Have you ever been this low?), Western Front, Vancouver (2011). His work has also been included in many group shows, including The Ungovernables, the New Museum Triennial, New York (2012), Popping Up, Hong Kong Art Centre (2010), Exhibition Experiment, Experimental Exhibition, JCCACʼs Wrong Place, Hong Kong (2010), No Soul For Sale, Tate Modern, London (2010), 2009 Platform in Kimusa, Seoul, and Portrait of Self Exile,The Shop/Vitamin Creative Space, Beijing (2009).

Minouk Lim (b. 1968, Daejeon, Republic of Korea) lives and works in Seoul. Her most recent solo exhibitions include Perspectives: Minouk Lim, at the Smithsonian Institutionʼs Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington DC (2012), and Minouk Lim: Liquide Commune at PKM Gallery in Seoul (2011). Group shows include Melanchotopia and Morality, Act IV: Remembering Humanity, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2011 and 2010), City Within the City, Artsonje Center, Seoul (2011), Touched at FACT, Liverpool Biennial (2010), and Trust, Media City Seoul (2010). Lim was also the recipient of the 1st Media Art Korea Award (2010) and the Hermés Korea Foundation Art Prize (2007).

João Vasco Paiva (b. 1979, Coimbra, Portugal) lives and works in Hong Kong. His recent solo exhibitions in Hong Kong include Forced Empathy: Anchored Monument I at Experimenta and Palimpseptic at Saamlung (both 2011), Experiments on the Notation of Shapes at Input/Output Gallery and Chirps at Fuse Residency Program, Videotage (both 2010). In 2011 Paiva participated in various group shows and conferences, including The Creators Project, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, New Media Archaeology (I and II) Videotage, Hong Kong, Nuits Sonores, Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon, and Imaginary Belongings, Museu do Oriente, Lisbon.

Part-time Suite (est. 2009, Seoul, Republic of Korea) is a collaborative group formed by Miyeon Lee, Byungjae Lee and Jaeyoung Park. In 2009 they installed their projects Under Interior and off-off-stage in a basement and an unoccupied lot in the centre of Seoul, while their project Loop the Loop was developed on rooftops in Seoul as part of the exhibition Perspective Strikes Back at Doosan Gallery, which later travelled to L'appartment 22 in Rabat, Morocco. In 2010 the group formed Part-time Suite Sound, a four-piece rock band, and Part-time Suite Press, an independent publisher. In 2011 they were nominated for the Hermés Korea Foundation Art Prize.

Yuk King Tan (b. 1971, Townsville, Australia) lives and works in Hong Kong. In the past decade, she has held solo exhibitions at Overflow City Gallery in Wellington, Sue Crockford Gallery in Auckland, Kunstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf and Camden Arts Centre in London, among other places. Tan has participated in group exhibitions such as the Barcelona Video Festival (2006), the Guangzhou Triennial (2005), the São Paulo Biennial (2004), and the Baltic Triennial of International Art, Lithuania (2002).