Investigating identity
Three Kuwait-based designers set out to explore the region’s design identity, by sitting down. The exhibition, now at Sharjah’s 1971 Design Space, is enlarged with new UAE-specific pieces.
BY RIMA ABINA AOUF
Do the buildings of the Gulf look like they belong here? What might it mean to give them a more distinctly local character? Three Kuwait-based designers have found a new way to explore the topic, via sculptures.
Ricardas Blazukas, Kawther Alsaffar and Jassim AlNashmi created the first Desert Cast sculptures in 2018, for Dubai Design Week’s centrepiece Abwab exhibition. The series received attention from design media worldwide—and caught the eye of Fatma Al Mahmoud, head of 1971 Design Space, who commissioned the trio to bring the project to Sharjah.
Desert Cast: Towards an Identity got its subtitle when the organisers realized that due to the variety of architectural influences and fabrication methods in the Gulf region, “there is no defined regional identity,” Al Mahmoud says. “Instead there is a developed regional design identity through the reapplication of regional and borrowed elements.”
Photographs Courtesy of 1971 Design Space
Those “borrowed elements” are the Classical Greco-Roman motifs that dominate Kuwait’s residential architecture, particularly its mansions. Many critics see this styling as kitsch, but rather than disregarding it, the Desert Cast designers explored how it could be part of a uniquely regional aesthetic.
This ornamentation is echoed in Desert Cast’s sculptures, but married with local techniques and given an experimental twist. In particular, the designers found a new method of traditional gypsum-moulding and sand-casting using foam, a popular contemporary craft material in Kuwait. The resulting forms are soft and organic, carrying the impression of crumbling sand even while they’re made of solid metal.
Ten of the 36 objects in the original series will appear in the new exhibition, alongside 14 new pieces that play with fresh shapes and techniques and introduce colour. 1971 Design Space also gave them a fresh setting. Al Mahmoud said the gallery had been turned into “something that looks like a refined gypsum factory”, with stacks of the stone filling the space. In October, the exhibition will add pieces by UAE-based architect, artist and researcher Talin Hazbar, who has worked with the Desert Cast designers to apply their methods within the local context, incorporating Emirati materials and vernacular elements.
Since the exhibition’s March opening got postponed due to the pandemic, the designers have been collaborating remotely. That’s also how audiences were initially able to access the exhibition, with the physical opening in November.
Desert Cast: Towards an Identity is at 1971 Design Space from November 7, 2020 to March 27, 2021.
