'A New Era'
Sharjah, UAE, 2025 / printed 2026
Archival pigment print, mounted on Dibond, framed in maple
89 x 50 in. | 226.1 x 127 cm
Set within the shifting sands of Sharjah’s desert, ‘A New Era’ reimagines an abandoned settlement near Al Madam.
Once inhabited by members of a semi-nomadic Bedouin community, the village now stands partially submerged beneath the dunes, its quiet interiors shaped as much by the movement of sand and light as by architecture.
Koopmans and Wexell were drawn to the site’s stillness, minimalist geometry, and striking palette. Soft blue walls, faded and eroded by time.
Within this altered space, vegetation emerges unexpectedly from the dunes. Its presence suggests not a return to the past, but the beginning of another life for the structure.
As overgrowth accumulates across the floors, the boundaries between interior and exterior, shelter and landscape, gradually dissolve.
The title ‘A New Era’ evokes the successive transformations embedded within the site: its creation during a period of profound change, its eventual abandonment, and its imagined reawakening.
Rather than reconstructing what has been lost, the artists envision the building as a living threshold, where traces of human history give way to new forms of growth.
On view as part of The Wild Within
Ongoing until October 22
10am-6pm every day except Sunday
Leila Heller Gallery
22 East 80th Street (at Madison Ave)
New York, NY