Essays commissioned for the 7th International Biennial of Sharjah, 2005.

Includes bibliographical references.

Sharing a Meaning: An Introduction/ Kamal Boullata --- Part One: Critical Perspectives: History of my Face/ Khaled Mattawa -- Borders (and Boarders) of Art: Notes from a Foreign Land/ Frederick N. Bohrer -- The Globalisation of Art/ Achille Bonito Oliva -- Belonging and Not Belonging/ Laymert Garcia dos Santos -- Where Here is Elsewhere/ Jean Fisher -- In Defence of Metaphor/ Elias Khoury -- Spheres, Cities, Transitions: International Perspectives on Art and Culture/ Gerardo Mosquera -- Prospectives for a New Classicality/ Boris Brollo -- Notes on Globalisation, National Identities and the Production of Signs/ Nicolas Bourriaud -- States of the Strait/ Nadia Tazi -- Beginning with Edward Said/ Joseph A. Massad --- Part Two: The Sharjah Experiment: The 7th Sharjah Biennial/ Hoor Al Qasimi -- A Place to Go/ Jack Persekian -- Unfolding Identities/ Ken Lum -- More than a Feeling: Issues of Curatorial Criteria/ Tirdad Zolghadr.

These essays bring together voices that are involved in shaping the art and cultural scenes outside the Western mainstream. Focusing on the concept of belonging, they explore how contemporary art produced outside the bounds of dominant cultural circuits responds to the challenge posed by globalisation. Entanglements between the local and the global, and the confluence of aesthetics and politics, are discussed from the point of view of the art historian, the sociologist, the critic, and the curator. The contributors address cultural nomadism and the experience of place, national identity and transcultural expression, the production of signs, and the implications of metaphor. The essays reveal how artists from traditional societies find in their cultural heritage the basis of a pluralistic creative expression, and how economic and political globalisation leads them to create new strategies of resistance.