Shaikha Al Mazrou unveils Dubai's 'largest site-specific art intervention' in Hatta mountains

The artwork is commissioned by Alserkal Arts Foundation, in collaboration with Dubai Culture and Arts Authority

Deliberate Pauses marks the largest site-specific artwork in Dubai. The work was created by Shaikha Al Mazrou. Antonie Robertson/The National

When Shaikha Al Mazrou was invited to create a site-specific installation in the mountains surrounding Hatta’s Leem Lake, she was conscious of not imposing her artworks on the rocky terrain, and instead finding a way to gracefully embed them in the landscape. She also wanted to use her signature approach of coaxing contrasts from unlikely spaces and materials.

These two motives seemed paradoxical. How could a public artwork blend with the landscape while simultaneously juxtaposing it? Deliberate Pauses manages to achieve just that.

Five round metallic sculptures are thoughtfully placed along the hiking trail around Leem Lake. With each circle measuring five metres in diameter, the work has been described as “the largest site-specific art intervention in Dubai". It was commissioned by Alserkal Arts Foundation, in collaboration with the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority.

The sculptures are in the same shade of red as Al Mazrou’s 2022 work Red Stack. That work was displayed in Regent’s Park as part of London's contemporary art fair Frieze. Eight large cushions, cast in metal, were piled several metres into the sky. Between the forms of the cushions and the rigidity of the cast metal, the structure appeared hard yet soft at the same time.

Deliberate Pauses presents a somewhat similar contrast. The circles lie against the jagged mountain surface with an appealing flatness – the coarseness of the rocks juxtaposing with the smoothness of the reflective steel. The circular frames of untreated metal, meanwhile, seamlessly merge with the iron-oxidized colour of the rocks. In that sense, the redness of the circles are an emboldened version of the surrounding natural hues.

“I had a lot of questions about why it is in red,” Al Mazrou says. “Aside from it being a signature in my work, but also I was drawing from the language of the mountain and using the colours around me. I could have polished the steel to give it of a different look but I wanted it to camouflage with the landscape and allow the red to push through.”

The project has been two years in the making. Al Mazrou took regular hikes in the mountains, sometimes accompanied by architect and academic Faysal Tabbarah, who curated the works.

The artist would wake at 5am, reaching Hatta just as the sun would begin to rise. She would walk meditatively through the rocky terrain. Whenever a specific site stood out to her, she would hammer a nail into the rocks and further mark the spot by sprinkling a powder around it. She would then survey the landscape from above, using a drone.

“The work required significant studies, such as understanding the terrain as well as excavations and thinking about the foundations,” Al Mazrou says. The Emirati artist reflected on the work’s title, Deliberate Pauses, both in the context of her artistic practice and as a literal representation of the pauses she had take during her hike.

The artworks dotted along the hiking trail are very much the traces of her journey through the mountains, as well as an invitation for viewers to follow in her footsteps. “It has multiple layers of definitions,” Al Mazrou says.

Each of the circular artworks is also fitted with light under the frame. The light is powered through solar panels that have been carefully hidden in the mountains.

“We have to think about public engagement through the night, and the light is activated after sunset,” she says. Al Mazrou adds that it was gratifying to have had the opportunity to converse with a landscape that has a personal significance to her, and to bring that relationship to the public sphere.

“I like the challenges that the landscape presented. It wasn't easy. We had to think about excavation and getting archaeological teams,” she says. “Ultimately, it was about creating a site intervention. The desire was to interact with the landscape, not to simply parachute an artwork on top of it.”

Deliberate Pauses is part of a series of large-scale public art commissions aimed at introducing public artworks across famous sites, including the Shindagha Historic District, Al Quoz Creative Zone and Hatta.

“Public art amplifies a sense of place and enables people to understand their environments in ways that are often too subtle to notice without reflection,” Tabbarah said in a statement. “In trying to highlight the stories of Hatta and Leem Lake, Shaikha Al Mazrou, Alserkal Arts Foundation and I worked collaboratively to ensure the artwork invites reflections about place, connection and wonder.”