An abandoned village in Mleiha, Sharjah, became the site of an art project featuring 10 international street artists. All photos: Inloco; Razmig Bedirian / The National
The 10 artists each picked a location within the village, giving it a whimsical new coat of paint before producing a series of works for an exhibition on site, titled Useless Palace
The Birch House by Turben
The Birch Sisters by Turben, in the window of the artist's Birch House
Artist Xeato painted a portrait of a cheetah for the project and created a series of objects based on the myth of Atlantis
Ivan Ilinskii created futuristic mirror cubes for the project
Abderrahmene Salah, known as Lokher, decorated the bottom of a pool discovered in the village with a 3D mural of his favourite childhood breakfast
Lokher's work often reflects on themes of nostalgia and home
Filippo Minelli placed objects depicting window areas and doorways with mashrabiya elements in the desert
Maxim Ima's Everyone had the clocks, but no one had the time
Turben's Birch House in the metaverse version of the Useless Palace exhibition. Works are presented in a gallery space and as they were originally, on site
The Useless Palace exhibition in its metaverse gallery space
The metaverse gallery is almost identical to the Inloco Gallery in Dubai
You'll be prompted to make an avatar when logging into the Useless Palace metaverse exhibition
Abderrahmene Salah's pool in the on site display in the metaverse
Turben's on site metaverse Birch House is a facsimile of the original
The metaverse Useless Palace exhibition culminates with a documentary by Anton Selone in the virtual theatre space
