The National reported on Zeinab AlHashemi becoming the first Emirati artist to take part in Forever Is Now 2, the Art d'Egypte exhibition staged among the Great Pyramids of Giza with support from Abu Dhabi Festival and running through 30 November 2022. The article centres on her installation Camoulflage 1.618: the Unfinished Obelisk, one of eleven works placed across the plateau.
The piece pairs a skeletal steel upper structure with a lower half wrapped in recycled camel hide, designed to blend into the surrounding desert. It takes its cue from the unfinished obelisk abandoned in Aswan after cracking during carving in antiquity, translating that history of interrupted ambition into a geometric form. The National places the work within AlHashemi's ongoing Camoulflage series, begun in 2015, which uses camel leather to explore desert geography and the geometric patterns found in nature; the series has previously appeared at Abu Dhabi Art, Desert X AlUla 2022 and in a commission for the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation.
Coverage of the Giza installation situates AlHashemi among an international line-up that included Pascale Marthine Tayou, JR and eL Seed, giving her camel-hide language its most prominent public stage yet outside the UAE.
