The Sharjah Art Foundation has named Angolan architect and curator Paula Nascimento as co-curator of Sharjah Biennial 17, set to open in January 2027. She will work alongside Berlin-based art historian and professor Angela Harutyunyan.
Nascimento, born in Luanda in 1981, is known for her cross-disciplinary work in art, architecture, and urbanism. A graduate of the Architectural Association School of Architecture and London South Bank University, she began her career in studios across London and Porto.
In 2011, she co-founded Beyond Entropy Africa with Stefano Rabolli Pansera, a research platform working across visual culture and geopolitics. Their Angola Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale, Luanda, Encyclopedic City, won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. This made Angola the first African nation to receive the award.
Her curatorial footprint spans Angola, South Africa, Portugal, Italy, and France, with collaborations including the Bamako Encounters, Triennale di Milano, ARCO Lisboa, and the Lubumbashi Biennial, where she served as associate curator in 2019 and 2022. She currently chairs the Artistic Committee at Nesr Art Foundation and advises Lisbon’s Hangar and CAM–Gulbenkian.
Nascimento’s work consistently returns to postcolonial urban conditions, contemporary infrastructures, and the ways art can imagine new social realities. In 2022, she received the Okwui Enwezor Fellowship Research Grant from Independent Curators International.
Harutyunyan, a specialist in Marxist aesthetics and post-Soviet art, teaches at Berlin University of the Arts. Her research focuses on historical temporality and alternative modernities, offering a sharp conceptual frame for the biennial’s ambitions.
Sharjah Art Foundation President Hoor Al Qasimi said their vision will emphasize “critical engagement, collective reflection, and new modes of exhibition-making,” with plans to activate Sharjah’s wider public and urban spaces.
