Sustainability Pavilion, EXPO 2020, Dubai
1 October - 30 March 2022
Two space-filling works titled ‘Measuring’ and ‘Directions’ prolong the Emirati conceptual artist’s ongoing exploration of his sensorial relationship to surrounding environments.
Measuring (2020) destabilizes the rational precision of architectural drawings. The artist explores the banal wall surfaces of his home, ‘measuring’ them in purely subjective terms. His perception of the space, inflected by both memory and mood, determine its dimensions, upending and satirizing the presumed accuracy of any spatial relationship. The Terra iteration of the Measuring pushes the boundaries of this series, initiated in 1998 as drawings on paper: the wall-filling dimensions and crisp dotted lines confront the visitor with a sense of subtle absurdity—a hallmark of Kazem’s creative stance.
Directions (2020, a 9-meter-tall light installation,) amplifies the conceptual punch of Kazem’s Directions series, begun in 1999. Using GPS coordinates of all the countries from which visitors will travel to the World Expo, the artist physically manifests an abstraction (GPS coordinates) of what is a physical position to begin with (a body in space).
