The Promised Land is a series of works inspired by the life in the UAE. Ever since I’ve been here, I have encountered construction and demolition every day of the year. It is a country that never stops building and never stops expanding. In my photo series I explore the process of the future that’s being built. It looks at what the present of the better future looks like, and how the steel rods and cement blocks of today will turn into the promised, glamorous city of tomorrow.
While The Promised Land sounds beautiful, what it is in the present is not. It feels like the sound of drilling persists in the air wherever one goes. It is something one cannot escape in cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It is this, which the series explores. It encapsulates the audience with its inescapable presence and surrounds them in a way, that everywhere the audience looks, they see the future being built. The works seem endless and repetitive, which is the experience one gets living in the UAE.
However the main focus in this project has been the fences surrounding the construction sites, rather than the sites themselves; that is because when one looks at all the construction sites, they look almost identical. One cannot tell one site apart from another, as all of them feature cranes, workers, and building materials on the backdrop of the desert. The posters and the fences however, are the ones, which showcase what the future will look like; hence my focus lies with them.
However the main focus in this project has been the fences surrounding the construction sites, rather than the sites themselves; that is because when one looks at all the construction sites, they look almost identical. One cannot tell one site apart from another, as all of them feature cranes, workers, and building materials on the backdrop of the desert. The posters and the fences however, are the ones, which showcase what the future will look like; hence my focus lies with them.