Capital art exhibit puts environment front and centre

Tini Meyer will unveil her sculpture incorporated with fish bones at Green Abu Dhabi at the Emirates Heritage Club in Al Bateen.

Tini Meyer, foreground, works on Samak last week in Musaffah. The German artist used fish bones in the sculpture. Rich-Joseph Facun / The National

ABU DHABI // A sculpture covered with fish bones will be unveiled in Abu Dhabi tomorrow as part of Green Abu Dhabi 2010 , which is taking place at the Emirates Heritage Club.

"This particular sculpture has a very strong message," said Tini Meyer, 27, the German artist behind the work. "It addresses the issue of overfishing, a metaphor for our wasteful consumption habits." The work is made of concrete and spells out the word samak, which is also the name of the sculpture and is the Arabic word for fish.

Green Abu Dhabi 2010 is an art show and a call to action. Organisers are inviting people to "paint the town green" by taking part in recycling programmes and beach clean-ups, and making simple changes in their lifestyles such as switching off their house lights when they are not needed. Green Abu Dhabi commissioned five artists to create and sell their work at the three-week art show, which focuses on educating people about the environment and living in a sustainable manner.

Meyer and the other artists are acting as spokespeople for the initiative, and will talk about what "paint the town green" means to them. Meyer, who lives in the capital, collected the bones for her sculpture at Abu Dhabi's fish market, gathering more than 500 bones from a variety of fish, including hammour and tuna, both of which are overfished. A percentage of all sales of artwork and merchandise sold at Green Abu Dhabi 2010 will go to the Emirates Wildlife Society, the Future Centre of Abu Dhabi and the Sharjah Humanitarian City.