In 1982, Sharif began to articulate his reconception of systems art through experimental performances staged in the corridors, classrooms, and lavatories of London’s Byam Shaw School of Art. Intervening within the proposed function of utilitarian spaces, Sharif’s performances transform their surroundings into, in the artist’s words, ‘a “willful area” in the activity.’ Although transitory, Sharif’s performances embody a conceptual mood, particularly apparent in a series of performances he executed in the desert of Hatta in 1983, where he transforms everyday acts of jumping, digging, burying, moving, and wandering into artistic rituals. Upending the urban logic of use value, the artist’s early performances evince a long held belief that Sharif later described in 2005: “[To create the] artwork is to cut something off from something else, to take that something you’ve just cut away and put it in a box, or on top of a box … and to affix a label beneath it that says: ‘this is a work of art’ … A work of art is to go to an empty desert and deliver a moving, impassioned speech that is at least half an hour long, and then go back to your house.”