Concrete Mirage
Three-channel video installation, asynchronous, looping, welded steel, concrete blocks, sand
2024
In Concrete Mirage, I reveal how globalized cities like Dubai, in spite of their modern architecture, can bear witness to meaningful lived experience. I offer glimpses into the everyday life of Dubai’s various expatriate residents—Arabs, Filipinos and South Asians who call the city home. Despite the decisions made by those above for “the down below” (in reference to the essay ‘Walking in the City’ by Michel de Certeau), they instinctively continue to find emotional resonance amidst their shifting surroundings.
In the installation, I juxtapose the softness of memory with hard, metal structures. The structures reference the construction fences that are a constant in the UAE. In contrast to these industrially-built fences, I hand-bend and weld steel to form my own interpretation of them. Their uneven corrugated pattern causes them to appear to shift, rendering them more unstable and susceptible to change just like the city they belong to.
Overlaid on these steel “fences”, I project hand-drawn animations, archival family footage and ground-level footage all set in Dubai that depict very personal, very specific memories of the city. I draw a parallel between the phenomenon of light and our internal memory landscape. Much like how people enliven architectural space, the light transforms the fences into canvases for memories to latch onto.
I designed the soundscape by striking the steel structures found in the installation. Together with voice, the sound design highlights the tension between intimate experience and impersonal architecture.
Three-channel video installation, asynchronous, looping, welded steel, concrete blocks, sand
2024
In Concrete Mirage, I reveal how globalized cities like Dubai, in spite of their modern architecture, can bear witness to meaningful lived experience. I offer glimpses into the everyday life of Dubai’s various expatriate residents—Arabs, Filipinos and South Asians who call the city home. Despite the decisions made by those above for “the down below” (in reference to the essay ‘Walking in the City’ by Michel de Certeau), they instinctively continue to find emotional resonance amidst their shifting surroundings.
In the installation, I juxtapose the softness of memory with hard, metal structures. The structures reference the construction fences that are a constant in the UAE. In contrast to these industrially-built fences, I hand-bend and weld steel to form my own interpretation of them. Their uneven corrugated pattern causes them to appear to shift, rendering them more unstable and susceptible to change just like the city they belong to.
Overlaid on these steel “fences”, I project hand-drawn animations, archival family footage and ground-level footage all set in Dubai that depict very personal, very specific memories of the city. I draw a parallel between the phenomenon of light and our internal memory landscape. Much like how people enliven architectural space, the light transforms the fences into canvases for memories to latch onto.
I designed the soundscape by striking the steel structures found in the installation. Together with voice, the sound design highlights the tension between intimate experience and impersonal architecture.
