A point in time
Public Art Installations

Public Art Programme

Permanent art works installed in Expo 2020’s public realm.

Introduction

Introduction

The 11 permanent public art installations that comprise Expo 2020’s Public Art Programme are inspired by 11th century mathematician, astronomer and physicist Ibn al Haytham’s seminal “Book of Optics”. Curated by Tarek Abou El Fetouh, the installations have been created by renowned artists from across the globe and ask viewers to examine the relationship between the imagined and the perceived. A platform for contemporary artwork, The Public Art Programme also forms a unique journey through the Expo grounds that explores ideas, aesthetics and concepts. Long after Expo 2020 ends, these artworks will live on, becoming an essential part of District 2020.

Khalil Rabah

A point in time

Khalil Rabah has created a set of sculptures that reference an 11th century CE instrument invented to measure latitude. Here the tool is reconstructed, its elements enlarged on a marble platform, with engraving indicating Expo 2020’s latitude.

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Monira Al Qadiri

Chimera

Through this sculpture, artist Monira Al Qadiri attempts to merge the pre- and post-oil eras into one. She creates aesthetic connections between pearls and oil as a way of re-imagining the past, present and future of the wider Gulf region.

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Asma Belhamar

Distorted Familiarities

This installation speaks to the distortion experienced commuting from mountainscapes to cityscapes, where the change from landscape to architecture and from topography to iconography feels like a journey through shifting scales and times.

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Hamra Abbas

Garden

Garden is a sculpture inspired by Mughal gardens and scenes depicted in miniature paintings, their style intended to represent a utopia where humans and nature can harmoniously coexist.

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Nadia Kaabi-Linke

One Day on Two Orbits

One Day on Two Orbits is a floor sculpture that shows the shadows of a bicycle on the ground over a day. While the bicycle is invisible, the shape of the shadow forms an image reminiscent of astronomical photographs of distant galaxies.

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Afra Al Dhaheri

Pillow Fort Playground

Through this marble sculpture of tikkay, Al Dhaheri revisits moments of impromptu play. The sculpture’s weight monumentalises the experience, allowing the architecture of the tikkay to prompt questions of reinvention, play and creativity.

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Shaikha Al Mazrou

The Plinth

The Plinth embodies Shaikha Al Mazrou’s aesthetic language, diverting materiality and creating dynamic forms with an interplay of tension and balance. The work’s form allows other artists to create artworks that will be exhibited in relation to it.

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Olafur Eliasson

The presence of absence pavilion (1/3 + 1A)

This upright, rectangular bronze was created by casting a block of glacial ice from the Nuup Kangerlua fjord off the coast of Greenland, formed over millions of years from highly compressed snow, representing the dwindling Greenland ice sheet.

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Haegue Yang

Sonic Planetarium – Dripping Lunar Sextet

Sonic Planetarium – Dripping Lunar Sextet is suggestive of a grand planetary model and is an extension of ongoing series, Sonic Sculptures, drawing on bells’ sonic associations with traditions across civilisations.

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Abdullah Al Saadi

Terhal

Terhal is a permanent public intervention in a seating area, consisting of map-like paintings from different perspectival orientations on stones from the Wadi Tayybah region, in the Emirate of Fujeirah.

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Yinka Shonibare CBE

Wind Sculpture III

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 react to natural elements in the surrounding environment.

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