“Burj Khalifa’s artists call” (Dubai Tunnel)

Project :

The aim of this artists call is to create a light installation that would cover the sky train roof in front of the Burj Khalifa, during day and night time. A light installation for the interior section of the walkway is also proposed by the artist.

Concept :

Multicolour chromatic hues of the area’s surrounding natural environment : desert & sea. While some saw the burning desert as an empty void and the Bedouin as unsophisticated tribesmen, others saw them as they saw themselves—noble men for whom the desert was a sea upon which they roamed freely and found refuge. To them,

the desert was life itself.

From sleepy trading port to global gateway in 25 years, the Middle East metropolis of Dubai has sprung up out of these very desert sands fronting another kind of desert, a blue and liquid one, the sea from where old dhows still sail to Iran like they did for centuries. To experience this vastness is to experience that penetrating silence, whether

it’s for an hour or a night. To witness the eruption and vibration of light on the multicolour hues emanating from the windswept dunes, unbroken by tree or shrub or the rarest cloud. A place where time stands still and history is always on the making.

The intent that drives this art installation is to bring inside the city all these extraordinary sensory elements that have been driven and hidden away from it. To re-establish our connexion to nature deep inside the urban setting. What better place to do this than a tunnel, a passage, as a symbol of rebirth and relinking to our senses. A purifying journey through a cocoon where all these forces and elements, geometric patterns and shapes, light, colours and temperatures converge as a whole, to form a fragile equilibrium, from which we would emerge changed.

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