Wasim Zaid is a Jordanian architect and artist whose current installation pieces are both a nod to the past, and a vision of the future.
One immediate thing you’ll notice is his medium: Wasim uses a traditional style of sand art practiced in Jordan, with a few twists. For example, his containers are empty flourescent tubes, which hang in a long row, like wind chimes.
NOTE: As his installation work is more difficult to photograph head-on, and still convey the full sense of the work, I’m going to do something a bit unusual and show a few extra photographs taken from different angles, so you can get a better sense of his pieces.
This first piece is entitled Egotistic Misrule. It contains over 88 pounds of sand (40kg) as well as as more than 3600 wood pieces that separate the tubs to create “pixels” of colored sand within each tube.
The overall pattern is beautiful, but each tube is also a stunning work of art, making this piece worth experiencing from every distance.
Wasim also explains a bit of the inspiration for this piece on his website: “. . . under certain circumstances individual pixels can rise above their personal interest and form a collective pattern, while retaining their individuality, movement, and freedom.”
Here is another, entitled Critical Mass:
Like the first installation piece above, this one, too, has a specific meaning.
“This pattern reflects the critical mass, a term that indicates the sufficient number of adopters of innovation in a social system, so that the rate of adoption becomes self-sustaining and creates further growth,” Wasim writes.
Wasim’s FluoreSAND installations have been nominated for the 2018 BLOOMAward prize in Germany, and are gaining international attention—to learn more about his work, please visit his website today.
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