11/01/2026
Arriving at East-West/West-East was one of the defining moments of our art pilgrimage through , a moment when scale, silence, and steel aligned so precisely that the desert itself felt like a dimension of the work. Commissioned by Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani and unveiled by Qatar Museums in 2014 as part of Serra’s first major solo engagement in the Middle East, the installation spreads four towering Cor-Ten steel plates across more than a kilometre of the Brouq Nature Reserve near Zekreet, calibrated precisely to the rise and fall of the terrain so that each monolith stands at a unified height even as the ground shifts beneath them.
Known to be Serra’s largest permanent land work and one of the most ambitious outdoor commissions of his career. Standing before them, four austere planes like ancient sentinels, you feel something elemental: the air seems to thin, perspective expands horizontally and vertically, and your body, unconsciously, becomes a measure of the space. These plates amplify the desert, giving form to horizon and emptiness in equal measure. Serra often spoke of space, not steel, as his primary material, and here that assertion becomes literal. The desert’s geometry, heat, wind, and horizon are as much part of the work as the oxidising metal itself. What struck us most was how the installation demanded movement: you walk from one plate to the next, unconsciously timing your pace against the shifting corridor of light and shadow. In a landscape with no edges, no skyline of towers, the work becomes a compass of perception, a frame through which the desert’s silence and expanse are rendered perfectly. 🏜🏜🏜🟫🟫🟫🇶🇦🇶🇦🇶🇦
