Artist： Maider López
Date：2007
Location：Sharjah Museum Square, Sharjah, Arab Emirates
Media/Type：intervention on public space
Commissioner：Commissioned e Produced by Sharjah Biennial 2007, in
collaboration with: Lab project produced by Sharjah Biennial and Spanish Embassy in Emirates and Sharjah Art Museum.
Researcher：Giusy Checola
This project created a football field at the Sharjah Museum Square in order to suggest new uses for the square and a new structure for urban space, in which the features of the street are brought into the game. The artist added goals on either end, but because pre-existing features such as benches and streetlamps were not altered, the square became a hybrid multi-purpose public space. By overlaying this recreational use onto the square’s multifunctional structure, she created new ways of public interaction.
These interventions temporarily changed the meaning of the location, and as a consequence changed the public’s relationship to it. The project suggests a model for easy and relaxed integration of different activities, based on human relations. It’s informed and activated by the inhabitants of the space and their experience since it attempts to rework the idea of the city through the practice of the people. It demonstrates the human capacity for transforming urban space and building more useable space. One measure of its success is that what was planned as a temporary project has been adopted by the community as a permanent urban intervention. |
