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ELSA Exarhu
doha
Qatar has built up a reputation of a quality art and architecture promoter, patronising big names, nurturing talents, and
enhancing inspiration for art, design and architecture.
While surrounded by the sea and desert, the country is lavishing amazingly precious and unexpected art displays for its residents and visitors.
In Doha, the Museum of Islamic Art is one achievement that entices everybody. But what about the wild? The desert is a depository of immense love and connection with nature for the Qataris. It is in this spirit that a great sculpture project, signed by Richard Serra, has been erected in the Qatari desert.
Called 'East-West/West-East', the sculpture is a set of four steel plates implanted into the desert of the Brouq Nature Reserve, near Zekreet in western Qatar. The four steel plates are set in a span of more than a kilometre in a natural corridor formed by gypsum plateaus.
According to the Qatar Museums Authority, all four plates, each rising between 14.7 metres and 16.7 metres above the ground, can be seen and explored from either end of the sculpture. It is situated approximately one-and-a-half hour drive from Doha.
What better than the thoughts of the artist for understanding the message of this artwork? Here are Richard Serra's thoughts and experience building this sculpture.
What do you want people to think and feel when they experience the work?
I think what happens is that people go to the desert and it's a place where one contemplates one's own existence to some degree, it's a very solitary place. It's a place where one doesn't really contemplate the past or the future, where one can really be in the presence of what the place allows in terms of internal reflection. And this place makes a space within that place to walk and measure yourself against the rise and fall of the landscape. The day we inaugurated it, hundreds of people arrived ” and they walked the entire length and back. For the most part, people were very generous in the way that they felt about the creation.
Basically, what the piece does is it collects the space, it makes a place within the space, and connects both sides of the peninsula where the water is both on the eastern and western side. The piece is directly on axis with east-west, so I called it"East-West" and because I am a Westerner working in the East, it kind of multiplies that joining of both propositions.
Some people have questioned the relevance of the sculpture in the middle of the desert and whether it was worth the cost. What is your response?
I feel like I am making a cultural contribution to the country. The pieces are of a certain height and thickness where I think they will last; the piece has an implied timelessness, and I think it is seen as that.
You have said that you consider space to be your primary material. How is that reflected in East-West/West-East?
What I do is use steel in order to collect space in relationship to how people understand their movement through space. So the piece deals with the nature of duration and time in relation to walking and looking, and people go out there and that's what they do. I think in the future that is what people will do. I think it's gotten quite a bit of attention here, people are starting to go out there ” it's not that far from Doha, it's about an hour and 20 minutes' drive out there. I think people will explore it and it's my hope that as people pass through this area of the country that they'll go and have a look.
You have called East-West/West-East your most fulfilling piece to date.
East-West/West-East is definitely one of the most fulfilling pieces I have done in my life. I have spent a long time coming and going in and out of the desert. During the installation, I was there the entire time. And what you find there is that every day the light changes, every day the wind changes, every day your relationship with the place changes. It's not the kind of desert that has soft sand, it's a really hard, rough, craggy desert ” the only place I could compare it to in the United States that would make any sense at all is the south-west, but it is not really like that. It is a gypsum desert with two very distinct sea levels ” with these enormous gypsum plateaus.
The author, a Doha resident, is an avid reader of Qatar Tribune & can be contacted at [email protected]
