Richness of UAE desert brought to life at Tokyo exhibition

The oases of the UAE and their legacy of building communities will be the focus of an exhibition at Tokyo’s Atelier Muji Ginza.

The exhibition, titled New Circulation, will take place between November 29 and January 26. It will comprise artworks, photographs, videos and maps that explore several aspects of oases, from the many uses of the date palm to the irrigation system known as the falaj.

New Circulation is the first exhibition at the Atelier Muji that looks towards the UAE and the Arabian Peninsula. The gallery space highlights the ethos of Muji and its parent company Ryohin Keikaku. The brand has long been known for its recycling and sustainable production practices, and the exhibitions at Atelier Muji seek out ways to carry that vision into the future.

In the context of New Circulation, the exhibition will reflect upon the communal essence of oases, suggesting how their customs and technologies have the potential to inspire novel ways of thinking about sustainability.

The exhibition is curated by urban researchers Ahmed and Rashid bin Shabib. The brothers are perhaps best known for being the founders of Brownbook, which examines cities around the world while highlighting points of cultural intersection. Their research, meanwhile, often focuses on concepts of sustainability gleaned from vernacular architectural practices.

One example of this is The Anatomy of Sabkhas. The publication accompanied the 2021 National Pavilion UAE at the Venice Architecture Biennale. The pavilion won the Golden Lion Award, the event's highest honour, and suggested how the country’s salt flats, if tended to, could be an important instrument in the fight against climate change.

Last year, the brothers collaborated with the luxury brand Cartier to present an installation that reimagined the manama. An elevated plinth that is designed to promote airflow during summer, the manama uses sustainable forms of construction to keep the temperature cool. The brothers suggested the traditional architectural form, with its passive cooling system, makes it ideal to use in public locations, including bus stops or rest areas.

In 2015, during the Milan Expo, the brothers created an exhibition for the National Pavilion UAE that looked at how dates, the palm tree and the falaj system produced a social and environmental ecosystem.

As such, New Circulation feels like a natural extension of the brothers’ research. However, it also aims to address a gap in their work.

"A lot of the research that we've been doing around urbanism is really narrowed down towards the topic of ecology, specifically ecology within desert landscape,” Rashid says. “One angle that we missed a lot is drawing out the topic of community within ecology. This is where the exhibition really fills the void.”

New Circulation, Rashid says, examines how social and cultural traditions formed around an ecological reality. In this case, the oasis and the falaj. An ancient system of irrigation, the falaj features hand-dug channels where water is transported from mountains and springs to nourish farms. The irrigation technique is included in the Unesco Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

“What can a falaj inform us today?” Rashid says. “Why does it continue to exist when there are other ways of irrigation and networking?” It is a question that aims to traverse beyond nostalgia.

“Do we relinquish the centuries-old tradition of making aflaj, or do we have them in tandem as a form of natural intelligence?” Ahmed says.

This question will be represented within the exhibition through illustrations by Laith Khalifa. The Omani artist will depict the ancient irrigation system by charting its starting point in the mountains before it waters areas of date palms.

A series of archival photographs will also depict the significance of oases and the falaj within UAE history. One in particular stands out. It depicts the Bin Shabib brothers’ grandfather, Mohammed Saeed Al Mulla, sitting in a manama by a falaj, alongside UAE Founding Father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the former Ruler of Dubai.

While the falaj has a starring role in New Circulation, the exhibition highlights it as a vital component of an oasis rather than exclusively looking at the water system. “We’re also talking about the material recycling from palm trees, and these resources that can become seating, social gathering spaces and architectural elements,” Rashid says.

He adds it aims to show how the desert is a resource, and contrary to its reputation of barrenness, it has a bustling ecology, full of life. A section will showcase this lushness. A series of maps will be pinpointing oases and falaj networks across the Hajar mountain range.

The maps will be complemented by a series of photographs by Shinsui Ohara. The Japanese photographer visited various locations across the country, including Al Ain Oasis, the Hatta Dam and its surrounding mountains, the Fujairah desert as well as Al Dhayah Fort in Ras Al Khaimah. While the maps offer a meteorological and topographical perspective of oases and falaj systems in the UAE, Ohara’s work will provide another interpretation of the landscape in a section aptly labelled East Meets East.

Other components of New Circulation will include a majlis area, where discussions around topics presented at the exhibition will take place, as well as a section dedicated to Brownbook.

Furthermore, Toraya Confectionary, a company known for its traditional Japanese sweets, will provide a lighthearted cultural fusion at the exhibition, presenting wagashi made with dates, instead of red bean paste. The sweet comes as a merry way of pondering the possibilities of new circulation, and how different cultures can come together to produce something that, though grounded in their disparate traditions, is entirely new.

Ahmed says he hopes the exhibition puts forward “this idea that although the region is going through an economic transformation, we're still rooted in our core identity".

However, as keen as the Bin Shabib brothers are to present facets of UAE culture to Japan, they are interested in seeing how audiences at the Atelier Muji respond to New Circulation.

“It will also help us reshape this presentation into a contemporary form,” Ahmed says, hinting that the New Circulation might grow to become a travelling exhibition, introducing the oases and aflaj of the UAE to other countries around the world.

"So at the same time, although we're really interested in looking at what we're taking from here there, but we're equally interested in looking at how they're going to respond, and also help us to shape this presentation into a contemporary form."