Return to the 'Hol'

As part of Abu Dhabi’s cultural sector's effort to reserve national pride in the UAE’s cultural inheritance, The Emirati Games Exhibition was curated featuring 5 commissioned artists' interpretations of 5 traditional games.

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My interactive, kinetic installation portrayed the game 'عظيم السرا' 'Atheem alsra'; a game played by young boys in the desert's night sky where a bone is thrown by a player and the rest have to find it and bring it back to a central circular home base 'the Hol'. Taking inspiration from a child’s play, I wanted my piece to maintain a sense of energy, playfulness, and dynamism. The game ends with the final struggle and rush of returning safely to the Hol. The boys chase one another; many energetic vectors approaching one point of attraction at the center of a seemingly ever-shrinking circle. Using a proximity sensor, an iris opening and closing mechanism is triggered by the distance the viewer is from the piece revealing or hiding the overlapping pattern of white threads that express the boys running in their white traditional attires in the dark sky returning to the Hol.