Under the Patronage of Her Highness Sheikha Shamsa bint Hamdan Al Nahyan, The Christo and Jeanne-Claude Award presented by New York University Abu Dhabi and in partnership with the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation, was established in 2012 to nurture artistic talent in the United Arab Emirates. It is an annual award produced in collaboration with The NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery.

Soil has been a subject of wonder, imagination, and knowledge in nearly every ancient culture, an active archive saturated with both material and immaterial memory. To witness, learn from, and physically engage with the ground beneath us is to deepen our understanding of how we conceive and shape the built environment.

Shaheeq draws inspiration from the mangrove forests of the UAE, a unique wetland ecosystem that thrives at the threshold of land and sea. Mangroves function as ‘blue carbon sinks,’ naturally locking atmospheric carbon back into the subsoil in the form of organic carbon. This sediment-rich under-layer serves as a growing archive of environmental memory and regeneration.

The project employs the ancient building technique of rammed earth, using a composition carefully tailored by the artist to respond to materials native to the UAE. Layers of natural soil, limestone powder, mineral pigments, shoreline compost, and organic matter such as wood chips, crab shells, dried leaves, and roots are compacted into sculptural form using hand-crafted rammers.

The sculpture’s color gradient is derived from the mangrove’s layered environment: beginning at the base with dark, nutrient-rich soil; transitioning upward through pale beach sand, shades of water blue, vibrant greens of shoreline flora; and culminating in a summer-hued sky blue—an homage to the arid, expansive sky of the UAE’s warmer months.

Meant to return to its place of origin, the sculpture is installed within the mangrove shoreline. Over time, tides and weather will gradually erode the structure, allowing its organic materials to dissolve back into the ecosystem—feeding the very landscape from which it was formed. In this cycle of making and unmaking, Shaheeq offers a gesture of reverence to the land, proposing that construction and decay can be one and the same act of care.