Le Monde called her an ‘ambassador of Emirati soft power’ upon the sheikha being awarded France’s Order of Arts and Letters in April this year. The Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization also recently anointed her ‘Ambassador Extraordinary’ for Arab Culture for the coming year. Certainly her influence has long spread beyond Sharjah, where the curator’s father is emir. She was at the helm of the biennial there from the age of twenty-two, and now, 22 years later, with that experience bagged, she’s proved her mettle beyond the familial sphere of influence. The curator has managed a balance between clout and credibility, advocating for global-majority artists and often bringing a sense of politics alongside the funding she no doubt attracts to her largescale events. The first non-Japanese artistic director of the Aichi Triennale, this year she got a reported $9m budget to install works throughout Aichi Prefecture, including those by John Akomfrah, Wangechi Mutu and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Taking the title A Time Between Ashes and Roses from a 1970 work by Syrian poet Adonis, Hoor continued to privilege non-Western and Indigenous artists, with critics commenting on the biennial’s ‘unwavering commitment to ethical clarity’ and lauding its focus on ‘tension between activism and spectacle’. When her Biennale of Sydney, Rememory, opens next March, Hoor will be herding visitors to the west of the Australian city, home to many diaspora communities, with artists including Emily Jacir, CAMP, Tuan Andrew Nguyen and Indigenous artists including Yaritji Young and Richard Bell. Despite the globetrotting and acting as president of the International Biennial Association, she is also president of the postgraduate Global Studies University in Sharjah, which recently announced the launch of its fully funded PhD programme. ‘I’m always interested in decentring; I want art to be part of people’s daily lives,’ Al Qasimi stated in an interview marking this year’s edition of the Sharjah Biennial. Al Qasimi remains the president and director of Sharjah Art Foundation, no doubt having a hand in selecting Angela Harutyunyan and Paula Nascimento as curators for the 2027 Sharjah Biennial.