Ope, there goes gravity (2020—ongoing). Installation; ceramic sherds, tape, accession tags, rebar, cement blocks, site photographs, drawings.
---
On Friday, 27 November of 2020, Abu Dhabi’s skyline underwent a drastic alteration. This change cannot be described as anything but an erasure, wiping clean a remnant of the past, a reminder of recent economic failures.
In the days and weeks leading up to D-day (demolition day), I witnessed a flurry of activity along the corniche. Workers hastily constructed scaffolding and secured metal studs, to which they attached white, corrugated metal sheets onto a new two-story, rectangular structure. It remained plain until, a few days later, they plastered on its side a giant MODON sign. I noticed the glazed front of this fancy white cube as I left Mina Zayed in the opposite direction. The seamless glass surface told me that this latest waterfront property was meant for watching something. In other words, it was for the viewing pleasure of.
Uninterrupted sight lines pointed directly at Mina Plaza, a tower block comprised of four unfinished mixed-use structures that were constructed in 2007 (great timing, I know). I first came across these buildings in 2015 and thought they were newly undergoing construction, but they sat there, dormant, for another two years. It was only later that I understood why these windowless concrete monsters slumbered within an area expecting massive, and rapid, change... Read more here.
As installed in So Different, So Appealing, Warehouse421 (2021).