Zeinab Al Hashimi: Mapping Space and Time
Documenting change through pattern and process
Zeinab Al Hashimi, Abu Dhabi 2: Coast Collision (2016), archival inkjet print. Courtesy of the artist.
With text by Sabrina DeTurk, academic, writer and art historian.
Zeinab Al Hashemi is perhaps best known for her three-dimensional works, however her photographic series Urban Phantasmagoria (2013-1016) also reflects a number of themes and concepts that are critical to her practice. The works in the series are created from composite satellite photos of Dubai and Abu Dhabi and incorporate Al Hashemi’s fascination with patterns, mapping and the representation of space and time.
Al Hashemi worked with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) satellite center to acquire the images used in this series and comments that she enjoyed the ‘challenge’ of explaining her project and the opportunity to collaborate with an organization that was not used to receiving requests form artists. She sees collaboration as central to her process. According to Al Hashemi ‘I do not limit myself to certain media or skill’ and by collaborating with others she can expand the boundaries of her practice to incorporate a broad range of media and styles.
For the photographs in Urban Phantasmagoria Al Hashemi focused on the idea of mapping and urban design as concepts underpinning the images. She also admits to an ‘obsession’ with patterns that comes through in this series as well as in many of her other works. The photographs in the series have a kaleidoscopic quality and this distortion sometimes completely abstracts the landscape, leaving little reference for the viewer other than color and pattern. In other images, however, signal landmarks such as the Burj Al Arab or Burj Khalifa form a repetitive hallmark that both grounds the viewer in space and time while expanding our horizons through the destabilizing repetition. Al Hashemi is interested in the way the cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi were put together, seeing them as ‘well designed rather than organic .’ Her own highly choreographed and impeccably rendered photographs reflect that intentional design not only in their subject but in their style.
Al Hashimi describes one of the main ideas behind Urban Phantasmagoria as showing ‘not what is, but rather what could be.’ Photography has since its earliest days been associated with both realism and manipulation and is thus a fitting medium for explorations and documentations of change in space , time, and landscape. Urban Phantasmagoria also considers the relationship between manmade and natural environments, and the tensions that can exist between these two states. The photographs in the series feature both urban and desert landscapes and several show the sometimes uneasy balance between the two that is visible in the UAE . Sand dunes encroach on the edges of suburban housing tracts while vast resort complexes shape the ebb and flow of the Arabian Gulf. The rapid pace and large scale of development in UAE has frequently been noted as placing the manmade in tension with the natural, or perhaps with the traditional, and Al Hashemi’s photographs, with their disorienting appearance, nod to that tension.
One of Al Hashemi’s most recent projects, Metamorphic (2017), was designed for the exhibition Co-Lab: Contemporary Art and Savoir-faire, one of the inaugural exhibitions of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. This sculptural installation at first glance seems to bear no relationship to the photographs of Urban Phantasmagoria. However, Al Hashemi sees Metamorphic as a ‘continuation’ of that earlier work as it references mapping, landscape and the relationship between the natural and manmade. The artwork combines stained glass and metal mesh and the colours of the glass reflect elements in the topography of Saadiyat Island, where the Louvre Abu Dhabi is located, specifically the sand and water of and around the island. The mesh itself is the reinforcing steel ubiquitous in construction projects throughout the UAE, thus providing a manmade juxtaposition to the earthly elements reflected by the stained glass. It is almost as though the sculpture forms the logical conclusion to the explorations of space, place and time begun in Urban Phantasmagoria.
Zeinab Al Hashemi is a Dubai born and based conceptual artist and designer specializing in site-specific installation and spatial art. She received her BA in Multimedia Design from Zayed University and has exhibited widely in the UAE and internationally. She is represented by Cuadro Gallery and is currently engaged in the development of a public art project in the UAE.