If you’ve visited Reem Central Park recently, you’ll certainly have noticed that it has been covered with an explosion of wonderful colours and beautiful motifs.
This is because Aldar Properties and Abu Dhabi Art 2019 have commissioned four UAE-based artists to create a series of permanent pieces for the park.
Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim, Hesam Rahmanian, Ramin Haerizadeh and Rokni Haerizadeh are the talented ones responsible for adorning the 24 pillars which surround the skate park, plus the staircases, playgrounds and four of the walls.
Reem Central Park only opened towards the end of last year, and with a stunning setting overlooking the mangrove trees, as well as loads of awesome food trucks and a pretty beach, it’s one of our favourite places to relax at the weekend.
Bit these site-specific pieces have made the spacious park even better it was before.
We chatted to artist Hesam Rahmanian about what the process involved.
Were you excited to be involved with the Al Reem Skate Park project?
We were so thrilled, and it was an honour to be trusted with such a collaboration.
We worked at the skate park for about a month. But before that we did two weeks of research before we started working in the space. We are so pleased with how it has turned out.
What inspired the ideas behind the paintings?
Since the project came with a lot of freedom, we decided to take our studio out into the public, so we could study the diversity of the space and respond to people’s interactions.
We observed people dining in the park and watching their children play, and decided to treat the site as a place where the line between public and private is blurred.
What kind of patterns did you use?
After our first visit to the park, we had various ideas. We considered using something repetitive to mimic the act of skating or triangle patterns such as the ones found on pottery in different cultures.
We wanted to create a public space which felt like a home. So we decided to use motifs that you’d normally find inside, such as the ones found on blue and white Chinese porcelains. We focused on creating a space that was filled with culture.
Have you ever worked on anything like this before?
In early 2000, Rokni (fellow artist Rokni Haerizadeh, who also worked on the project) did a mural for a German consulate in Tehran. But this was the first time we’ve worked on a public project as a collective.
Rokni, Ramin (Haerizadeh) and I have been working together for the past ten years in Dubai, as well as doing individual projects. We often invite other people from different professions to participate in our projects too. This is why when we use the word ‘we’ it doesn’t only refer to the three of us. For this project we also invited Nargess Hashemi and Sara Rahmanian to assist us in the process.
Why do you work well as a group?
As we work as a collective, we are constantly discussing ideas and debating how things should and shouldn’t be done. We go through disagreements, misunderstandings and critique each other’s art, but this helps us to look at things from different angles.
Therefore, for us, a painting is like a field of negotiation that we debated our way through.
We each leave a mark on our projects at different times, either through creating a collage, painting, drawing or another form of artistic expression.
Reem Central Park, Reem Island, www.reemcentralpark.com.
