Hoor Al Qasimi

Hoor Al Qasimi (born 1980) is an Emirati art curator, a daughter of the Ruler of Sharjah, and the founder, president and director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, which she established in 2009 after co-curating the Sharjah Biennial's sixth edition at the age of twenty-two. Educated at the Slade School of Fine Art, the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal College of Art, she was named the most influential person in the contemporary art world in ArtReview's Power 100 of 2024. ^{1 2}

Al Qasimi was born in 1980 into the ruling family of Sharjah, a daughter of Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammad Al-Qasimi; the Arabic article names her mother as Jawaher bint Mohammed Al Qasimi. ^{1 3} Her twin brother, Khalid bin Sultan Al Qasimi, was a fashion designer, and he died in 2019. ¹ She completed her undergraduate studies at the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 2002, postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2005, and an MA in curating contemporary art at the Royal College of Art in 2008. ¹

Al Qasimi has been involved with the Sharjah Biennial since 2003, co-curating its sixth edition at the age of twenty-two, and in 2009 she founded the Sharjah Art Foundation, which organises international exhibitions, residencies, commissions, publications, festivals and educational programmes, and of which she is president and director. ¹ She curated the United Arab Emirates' pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 and the 15th Sharjah Biennial in 2023, titled Thinking Historically in the Present. ¹ She has been president of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial since 2022, and she is to lead the 2025 Aichi Triennale in Japan and serve as artistic director of the 2026 Biennale of Sydney. ^{3 1} In June 2024 she presented a clothing collection in London that built upon her late brother's work in the fashion industry. ¹ She received an honorary doctorate from the University for the Creative Arts in 2023 and was named the most influential person in the contemporary art world in ArtReview's Power 100 list of 2024. ¹

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