Sharjah Biennial 8 addressed the growing social, political and environmental challenges our world is facing due to excessive urban development, political and economic ambitions, and the thoughtless misuse, abuse and exhaustion of natural resources. The exhibition, with its accompanying film programme, symposium and workshops, focused on the renewed role of art in addressing a wide range of issues that directly affect, in an alarming magnitude, life as we know it. It is not intended as a judgmental exercise, telling people how to live their lives; rather aims to problematize current environmental concerns towards a greater understanding of our responsibilities with respect to nature. Curators, participating artists, filmmakers, intellectuals, academicians, writers, students, politicians, officials, institutions, entrepreneurs, workers, every single person who helped to realise Sharjah Biennial 8 was engaged with this urgent process of enquiry. It is our conviction that only by implicating all sectors of society into questioning our social, political, and ecological praxis can we begin to re-establish a mutually sustainable and reciprocally renewable relation with the earth.