Shaikha Al Mazrou in The National

Melissa Gronlund, The National, March 29, 2017

Melissa Gronlund reviews Art of Nature, the group exhibition curated  by the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi and the biodiversity of the UAE. The exhibition organised as part of the Abu Dhabi Festival is on view at a gallery at Umm Al Emarat park, inaugurating the new multi-use space.

 

­Dubai-based artist Al Mazrou created Sand Land  "an enormous land work of her own, covering 225 square metres, which features concentric circles bounded by a square. It clearly refers back to the Smithson work in its shape, but also relates to her own sculptural practice, in which she places geometric forms in ­tension with each other, or paints them on accumulations of ­technological waste. She says in a video accompanying the exhibition: 'I treated the land as a stretched canvas'."