Scratching the Surface project / Dubai
United Arab Emirates
In 2016, Vhils was invited to take part in Dubai Walls, a pioneering public art initiative that sought to embellish the city’s low-rise development known as City Walk. The project invited 16 of the world’s most renowned street artists to leave their mark on the walls of the recently built urban precinct.
Despite being framed as an anonymous figure, Vhils’ portrait was directly inspired by a photograph taken by the British military officer, explorer, and author Wilfred Thesiger of Musallim bin Al Kamam, a sheikh of the Musaifar lineage of Rashid Bedouin, during his travels in the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula in the late 1940s.
Vhils’ work sought to pay tribute to the Bedouin tribes who lived in the territory, making visible the invisible history that lies beneath its recent mass development, revealing the substratum of a new building that highlights the fragility of everything we build, of our presence and our history.
Scratching the Surface project
Bas-relief wall carving
Dubai Walls
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
2016