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JOURNEY OF FINDING BEAUTY

MUSCAT, OMAN / 2017

Collaboration: Stal Gallery

Funded by Goethe Institute Gulf Region, Stal Gallery

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What defines beauty? What lies in the eyes of the beholder? And what is considered beauty in the context of different cultures?

With the eyes of a trained architect and space strategist, I explored the cities that I was visiting, and I explored life in these cities.

During my residency in Oman, I studied what citizens find attractive in the architecture of their places. Thru systematically designed

city tours I developed a unique and very personal map of the respective city.

As the artist in residence of Goethe-Institute and StalGallery,  I once again went in search for a typology of architecture of the various periods in the history and development of Muscat. What structures do the Omanis of Muscat see as particularly valuable in their city? I invited artists, architects, and designers for workshops to debate beauty, desires and values.
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For several days we delved into their city, moving with different means of transport or just walking along. Thus we discovered our different views on buildings and places and tried to find out why someone finds a house or place beautiful and what emotions this evokes.
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Gathering the individual experiences generated a new and personal structure of the city. Everyone in our group had an individual definition for the beauty of the city. One could say that everyone had his or her very own beautiful city, with an own soul and a place of desires. The personal views on beauty of each participants was translated into an interpretation of each understanding. This is one example of the general understanding of Riham Noor who explained during the workshop that for her beauty is: Minimalism and simplicity.
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The individual works of the group were interpreted and transported into a video and also combined into a mindmap, also including my personal view on the city. The result is both a view on the city and a protocol of a process which was shown in an exhibition at StalGallery from 17 October to 2 November 2017.

During my observations in the city I found unused spaces which triggered my fantasy. I developed a series of videos which fill in those gaps within the city.

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