Curator Yuko Hasegawa was inspired by the courtyard in Islamic architecture, in particular, the historical courtyards of Sharjah, where elements of both public and private life intertwine, and where the objective political world and the introspective subjective space intersect and cross over.

The courtyard was also seen as a plane of experience and experimentation – an arena for learning and critical thinking of a discursive and embodied kind, a generative space for the production of new awareness and knowledge. Within the network of intensifying international and globalising links, the courtyard as an experiential and experimental space came to mirror something of Sharjah as a vital zone of creativity, transmission, and transformation.

Hasegawa selected more than 100 artists, architects, filmmakers, musicians and performers whose artworks and practices resonate with strands of the curatorial theme: the complexity and diversity of cultures and societies; spatial and political relations; notions of new forms of contact, dialogue, and exchange; and production through art and architectural practices of new ways of knowing, thinking, and feeling.