Artist Oscar Murillo’s installation of expectation and disorder on display at Sharjah Biennial 13

The inner courtyard of Sharjah Art Foundation’s Bait Al Serkal is regularly the site of immersive artworks. It will be no different for the 13th edition of the Sharjah Biennial, which opens to the public this weekend.

Oscar Murillo, a London-based Colombian artist, has transformed the normally tranquil open-air space into an area resembling a construction or destruction zone – it all depends on how it is perceived.

Several large trenches are carved out of the ground, with the excavated dirt and gravel positioned in seemingly random piles. The trenches are lined with Murillo’s paintings, while the rear of the space has more canvases on the ground, held in place with bricks.

There are several metal structures from which black tarpaulin material hangs, swaying in the wind – and some hang from small weighing scales. Amid the disorder, two green trees are planted.

Titled Condiciones aún por titular (Conditions yet not known), it is a concept Murillo has been thinking about for more than three years.

“The title alludes to a kind of indefinable energy, that is strong but neither positive or negative, and it leaves it up to the audience to make sense of it,” he says.

In many ways it is quite literal. Murillo explores the idea of uncertainty and this is presented through the somewhat chaotic scene. There is a philosophical aspect as well. Murillo is attempting to understand himself.

Where his work finds him “getting under the guts of the place”, the process also serves as a parallel to exploring what goes on beyond the surface of human experience.

What makes this even more impressive is that Murillo's rise to fame in the contemporary art world has been rapid. Only five years ago he was working as a cleaner to support his living as an artist. Now he is represented by David Zwirner, a high-profile American art dealer with galleries in New York and London. He has also exhibited in several international exhibitions and biennials, including Venice.

Murillo describes his Sharjah debut as a professionally-fulfilling experience. “This work is perhaps one of my strongest because of the freedom that I have had to work and the complete confidence that the curator gave me to tackle the space,” he says.

He is referring to Christine Tohmé, the curator for this year’s Sharjah Biennial, who selected Murillo as one of the 73 artists to take part in the three-month exhibition – 32 of which have been commissioned to produce new work.

Other notable inclusions are Kader Attia, a French-born artist of Algerian heritage, who explores different cultures and who questions western hegemony. He won the prestigious Prix Marcel Duchamp last year.

Attia is one of four interlocutors nominated by Tohmé to lead various iterations of the event that will take place over the course of a year and focus on four main themes – water, crops, culinary and earth.

Attia reflected on the theme of water in Dakar, Senegal, in January. In May, Zeynep Oz will consider crops in Istanbul, and in August, Lara Khaldi will study earth in Ramallah.

The final part will take place in Beirut in October when art collective Ashkal Alwan will investigate the culinary theme.

Tohmé wants to see a reciprocal act of exchange between the exhibition and programme in Sharjah, the off-site projects and the online research platform that she has called the chip-ship.

In that respect, Murillo’s work is one small cog in a big wheel that will take several visits to the emirate over the next three months to fully appreciate.

• Sharjah Biennial 13 runs from Friday (March 10) until June 12. For details go to www.sharjahart.org/biennial

aseaman@thenational.ae