Olafur Eliasson

The Curious Desert was the first solo exhibition of Olafur Eliasson’s work in the Gulf region, staged in March 2023.

The exhibition brought together a dozen new site-specific installations located in the desert, near the Al Thakhira Mangrove in Northern Qatar, and an extensive gallery presentation at the National Museum of Qatar of artworks created over the artist’s career.

The outdoor installation consisted of 12 temporary pavilions that Eliasson considers to form an artistic laboratory in the desert. Many of the experiments inside the pavilions utilised natural phenomena, such as wind, water, and sunlight, to create artworks that emerged over the course of the day or, as the seasons change, over the duration of the exhibition.

At the National Museum of Qatar, the gallery exhibition featured a variety of artworks from different periods of Eliasson’s career and in a wide range of media, including expansive light installations, complex geometric models, photo series from Iceland, watercolours, optical devices and an extensive map of the research areas that occupy the artist and his studio. The themes that run throughout the two-part exhibition relate to the broad interests expressed in Eliasson’s wider practice.

Text by Olafur Eliasson, Bouthayna Baltaji, Lina Patmali, Aspa D. Chatziefthimiou, Reem Al Selawhi, Hashim Sarkis. Photographs by Ali Faisal Al Anssari, Iwan Baan, Anders Sune Berg.

Text in English and Arabic.