Sharon Toval is a contemporary art curator and researcher whose practice is shaped by multicultural experience and an international perspective. With advanced academic credentials in art history, cultural policy, and museum studies, he has developed a wide-ranging curatorial career, creating exhibitions and projects for museums, art institutions, galleries, biennials, and festivals internationally.
 

Among his principal curatorial projects are the inaugural Ras Al Khaimah Contemporary Art Biennale (2026); Rima: Passages in Sephardic Sculpture, a solo exhibition at the Rochester Art Center in the United States; Hshuma at the MACT/CACT Museum in Switzerland; and Don’t Go Too Far—Works 1980–2022, a major retrospective devoted to Haya Graetz Ran at the Mishkan Museum of Art. In the UAE, he has curated the group exhibitions Longing, Be-Longing and Unveiling Human Echoes for the Ras Al Khaimah Art Festival between 2022 and 2024. His portfolio also includes exhibitions at Palais Porcia KunstRaum in Vienna and CBK—Center for Visual Arts in Rotterdam, as well as collaborations with biennials, digital art events, and international photography festivals. Following his role as curator of the first Ras Al Khaimah Contemporary Art Biennale, which opened in January 2026, Toval was appointed curator of the Ras Al Khaimah Art Festival 2027.

Toval is the founder and director of The Lab, an experimental art space dedicated to artistic research, process, and innovation, supporting a new group of emerging and established artists each year and providing a platform for experimentation beyond conventional exhibition formats.
 

Toval’s curatorial philosophy is grounded in the belief that art can act as a bridge between people, cultures, and different ways of understanding the world. His exhibitions frequently address social and political questions, with a particular focus on identity, minority experiences, cultural belonging, migration, memory, and narratives that remain underrepresented within contemporary culture. Rather than treating cultural difference as something to be resolved, his practice explores how encounters across difference can generate dialogue, empathy, and new forms of understanding. Through this approach, he also advocates for greater openness, accessibility, and more inclusive structures within the contemporary art world.
 

He is actively involved with the Organization for the Democratization of the Visual Arts (ODBK) in Berlin, contributing to initiatives promoting equality, transparency, and greater representation of minorities within the art world, and lectures internationally on these subjects. Toval is also one of the founders of the Jewish Islamic Cultural Center in Barcelona, where he serves as Artistic Director, developing cultural initiatives that encourage dialogue and encounter through the arts.
 

Alongside his curatorial practice, Toval is an international academic guest lecturer in curatorial studies, art theory, exhibition practice, and new media. He has lectured at institutions including the University of Minnesota, College of Liberal Arts, and Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi, Department of Archaeology and Art History, where his teaching and research contribute to a broader and more accessible understanding of contemporary curatorial practice within international academic and cultural contexts.