The Arabian gulf cost was always a point of interest for traders from India, Iran and other parts of the world. In the early days of20th century, lots of exchange...
The Arabian gulf cost was always a point of interest for traders from India, Iran and other parts of the world. In the early days of20th century, lots of exchange happened between the Trucial states or Trucial Oman which is the former name of UAE before theunion of the 7 emirates, and countries from north and south east Asia. This exchange effected many towns at that time such asDubai, Manama and Kuwait. This effect was great on the social, economical and on the cultural side of these towns. Lots ofinfluences was there and noticed in the way of trade, language and architecture of homes. One of the important aspect of theinfluence was the influence on the way people built their homes and how it evolved from using simple stuff like Palm treematerials or corals to using gypsum. Specifically, the gypsum ornament was one of the great influences and an iconic thing thatthe traders in Dubai and Bahrain brought with them from Iran and implemented it on their houses. It was a luxury for houses inDubai to have these ornaments and that what my project is about is how I represent these ornaments in form of art howeverusing materials from industry while printing the photos with alternative photography process. I researched a book by an architectfrom the region who studied these ornaments and I used some of his drawings and reference images to produce my work. I usedalso archival photographs from an architect who did his final project on his grandfather house which was located in Al Bastakyaarea in Dubai which is demolished in the late 80s. In addition to all this I also photographed one of important ornament in one ofthe houses in Sharjah and show it in this show. The whole process I used specially with the small prints is Alternative Photographyprocess which is using industrial materials such as Silver nitrate and Platinum.