Public Arts Programme
Eleven leading artists have created artworks for public spaces across the site of Expo 2020 Dubai.
How we see the world, constructed in our imagination.
Integrated throughout the Expo 2020 site, 11 commissioned public artworks create a journey of ideas, aesthetics and concepts. They will be landmarks, both today and in the future, creating a real and imaginary path during Expo – and afterwards, when they will become an essential part of District 2020’s innovative character within the urban fabric of Dubai.
One Day on Two Orbits - Nadia Kaabi-Linke
One Day on Two Orbits is a permanent floor sculpture by Nadia Kaabi-Linke.
One Day on Two Orbits by Nadia Kaabi-LinkeExpo 2020 Dubai
It shows the shadows of a bicycle on the ground over the course of one day, following the gradual transition from day to night, from the sun to the moon.
One Day on Two Orbits by Nadia Kaabi-LinkeExpo 2020 Dubai
While the bicycle itself is invisible, the shape of the revolving shadow forms an image reminiscent of astronomical photographs of distant galaxies.
Sonic Planetarium - Haegue Young
Orreries are beautifully crafted mechanical planetary models of the solar system that illustrate the positions and motions of planets and moons and are operated by a clockwork mechanism, yet not necessarily built to scale.
Sonic Planetarium – Dripping Lunar Sextet by Haegue YangExpo 2020 Dubai
Adorned with numerous bells, Sonic Planetarium explores the metaphorical and physical potential of bells, drawing on their sonic associations with spiritual and mystical traditions across civilisations.
The six arms are connected to a web of perforated plate designs, which are variations on Islamic geometric patterns. Their distinct orientation towards cyclical movement and geometric subdivision unfold in an endless diversity of polygonal and floral patterns.
The work pays homage to Ibn al-Haytham, who introduced the idea that the sun and the moon revolve on geometrically and temporally different orbits. This discovery led to a better understanding of both space and time on Earth and explained the existence of two calendar systems.
One Day on Two Orbits is a memorial for a celestial discovery that not only relocated the Earth in the solar system, but also harmonised different cultures of time.
Sonic Planetarium – Dripping Lunar Sextet by Haegue YangExpo 2020 Dubai
The spherical heads of Sonic Planetarium resonate with the contours of planetary bodies in the universe.
The work alludes to the achievements of Arab mathematician, astronomer and physicist Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965 - c. 1040 CE) and his work on perception, based on his observations of the moon appearing larger or smaller depending on the position of the viewer.
Haegue Yang's Sonic Planetarium - Dripping Lunar Sextet is suggestive of a grand planetary model and is also an extension of her ongoing series, titled Sonic Sculptures, which employs metallic bells.
A Point in Time - Khalil Rabah
Khalil Rabah has created a set of sculptures that reference an instrument invented in the 11th century CE to measure latitude. The Khwarizmi scholar Al-Biruni described this instrument as a machine that does not require calculation tables.
A point in time by Khalil RabahExpo 2020 Dubai
Operators of the machine use only sunlight and the three objects that constitute the instrument to draw diagrams that reveal the latitude of their location.
A point in time by Khalil RabahExpo 2020 Dubai
Rabah deconstructs the tool and enlarges its elements to create a playful arena on a white marble platform, with an engraved diagram indicating the latitude of the Expo 2020 site.
A point in time by Khalil RabahExpo 2020 Dubai
In this work, the artist explores the aesthetic aspects of this historical tool by revealing its constituent elements, setting its orbits into motion and inviting the audience to recognise their position on the planet.
The Plinth - Shaikha Al Mazrou
The Plinth by Shaikha Al Mazrou embodies her aesthetic language, which diverts materiality and creates dynamic forms with an interplay of tension and balance, demonstrating the artist's intuitive, keenly felt understanding of materials and their physical properties.
The Plinth by Shaikha Al MazrouExpo 2020 Dubai
The work conceptually and formally references plinths, and its form allows the future administration of the neighbourhood to commission other artists to create artworks that will be exhibited in relation to it.
Al Mazrou intends the sculpture to function as a tool for future dialogue with other artists.
The endless possibilities of these future collaborations will be guided through a set of rules and values set out in a document (The Manifesto), which is the result of an intensive discussion with a community of local artists.
The Presence of Absence - Olafur Eliasson
This upright, rectangular bronze sculpture by Olafur Eliasson expands on the artist's long-term engagement with natural environmental phenomena and his involvement in issues of sustainability and climate change.
The presence of absence pavilion by Olafur EliassonExpo 2020 Dubai
The presence of absence pavilion is formed by casting a block of glacial ice from the Nuup Kangerlua fjord off the coast of Greenland, initially formed over millions of years from layers of highly compressed snow.
The sculpture is an indexical trace of the Greenland ice sheet, which loses tens of thousands of similar blocks each minute as a result of global warming.
The presence of absence pavilion by Olafur EliassonExpo 2020 Dubai
In the sculpture, the now-melted ice is only present as absence, leaving the mere memory of the ice within the artwork.
This piece also expands upon Eliasson's investigation of chronology within his body of work: the vast time of deep cosmology, geological time and the tension between time's simultaneously abstract and tangible natures.
Garden - Hamra Abbas
Garden is a floor sculpture by Hamra Abbas inspired by Mughal gardens and idyllic scenes depicted in miniature paintings. Historically, their style intended to represent an earthly utopia in which humans coexist with nature in perfect harmony.
Garden by Hamra AbbasExpo 2020 Dubai
The imagery at work plays on the aesthetics of the desire for a blissful paradisiacal land, a feature found in many traditions worldwide.
However, unlike a traditional garden, this garden has no vertical or horizontal enclosure. The earthly waterfalls, rocks, flowers and a tree that reaches into the heavenly stars above are all interconnected.
Garden by Hamra AbbasExpo 2020 Dubai
Using the traditional marble and stone inlay technique from Lahore, the work examines the symbolic significance of garden images in relation to architecture through its evocative power and aesthetics to communicate that which is beyond description.
Wind Sculpture - Yinka Shonibare CBE
Yinka Shonibare CBE's work Wind Sculpture III harnesses the wind and freezes it in a moment in time. The artwork manifests as a large three dimensional, hand-painted piece of fabric that appears to be moving in reaction to natural elements in the surrounding environment.
Wind Sculpture III (one in a series of nine) by Yinka Shonibare CBEExpo 2020 Dubai
Shonibare often uses patterns normally associated with African identity.
Wind Sculpture III (one in a series of nine) by Yinka Shonibare CBEExpo 2020 Dubai
The fabric portrayed in his work has a complicated history, in terms of its origin and its movement along trade routes: it was originally designed as an Indonesian fabric and was then sold into the African market, where it came to represent African culture.
This intersection of cultural backgrounds is a perfect metaphor for the multi-layered identities in the world today, which the artist views as a network of artificial constructs.
Pillow Fort Playground - Afra Al Dhaheri
Afra Al Dhaheri's practice explores cultural reconfigurations in contemporary experience. In particular, her work is marked by a conscious enactment of loss as she captures a state of ephemeral memory.
Pillow Fort Playground by Afra Al DhaheriExpo 2020 Dubai
Through this marble sculpture of tikkay, traditional Emirati floor pillows, Al Dhaheri revisits moments of impromptu play.
The massive scale materialises the comparison in size felt by a child when building a pillow tower or fort. These childhood forts existed within our homes, within our rooms, as a space within a space within a space.
Pillow Fort Playground by Afra Al DhaheriExpo 2020 Dubai
The material weight of the marble monumentalises the experience of this recent history, allowing the delicate architecture of the tikkay to prompt questions of reinvention, play and creativity.
The viewer's presence and interaction are essential in activating this work, which becomes a tool that connects society in a mass recollection of memory.
Distorted Familiarities - Asma Belhamar
Asma Belhamar's practice frequently confronts the visual memory of local landscapes. Through this anchoring theme, she merges architectural and organic elements, translating them into hybrid materialities. Overall, her practice engages with notions of time and spatial memory.
Distorted Familiarities by Asma BelhamarExpo 2020 Dubai
This installation confronts perspectives of nature and the built environment, marrying the two realities.
Distorted Familiarities by Asma BelhamarExpo 2020 Dubai
Belhamar speaks to the visual distortion experienced when commuting from mountainscapes into cityscapes, where the change from landscape to architecture and from topography to iconography feels like a journey through shifting scales and times.
Distorted Familiarities by Asma BelhamarExpo 2020 Dubai
By borrowing fragments from different landscapes, these sculptural works dismiss the grandiosity of fixed formations, whether mountains or megastructures.
The individual pieces are staged in tangible proximity, and together, these new formations may well question how memories oscillate between spaces and sensorial perspectives.
Chimera - Monira Al Qadiri
This gigantic iridescent sculpture by Monira Al Qadiri is based on the shape of an oil drill. Because of its large size and reflective colour, it almost seems like a futuristic creature from outer space.
Chimera by Monira Al QadiriExpo 2020 Dubai
Before the discovery of oil, for hundreds of years the economy of the Gulf coastline had been based on pearl diving. With pearl diving, pearl trading and the music of pearl divers, entire cultures were created around this precious object.
Chimera by artist Monira Al QadiriExpo 2020 Dubai
The title Chimera refers to a mythical or fictional being composed of parts taken from various other animals. Through this sculpture, the artist attempts to merge the pre- and post-oil eras into one body.
Chimera by Monira Al QadiriExpo 2020 Dubai
She creates aesthetic connections between pearls and oil, through their colour, materiality, symbolism, ecology and economy, as a way of re-imagining the past, present and future of the wider Gulf region.
Terhal - Abdullah Al Saadi
Abdullah Al Saadi's work Terhal is a permanent public intervention in a seating area, and the result of his immersion in the unique natural surroundings of Wadi Tayybah in the Emirate of Fujeirah.
Terhal by Abdullah Al SaadiExpo 2020 Dubai
Al Saadi's passionate relationship with the natural environment is both simple and complex, intuitive and analytical. His many travels take him on long journeys during which he records his encounters with and experiences among natural elements.
He documents his daily activities, makes sketches in a regularly kept journal and collects different organic and mineral materials, which he later organises into constellations that follow a logic born from his reflections.
For Terhal, the artist made map-like paintings from different perspectival orientations on stones from the Wadi Tayybah region.
Terhal by Abdullah Al SaadiExpo 2020 Dubai
The stones are organised according to his own symbolic code, in an invitation to discover a kind of poetic archaeological language.
