“Portals to unspoken histories of the land”

Nestled in the mountains of Hatta, along 10km of winding hiking trails, five red reflective discs emerge—almost as if placed there by the hand of time itself. These discs are not merely objects within the landscape, they are deliberate pauses—beckoning those who wander to stop, reflect, and reconnect with the land beneath their feet.

This careful intervention titled Deliberate Pauses, the largest of its kind in Dubai, was commissioned as part of a series led by Dubai Culture and Alserkal Arts Foundation. Conceived by UAE-born artist Shaikha Al Mazrou alongside curator Faysal Tabbarah, the work took shape over 30 solitary hikes spanning three years of deep exploration of Hatta—a mountainous hinge between the Arabian Gulf’s coast, the desert, and the fertile lands of the UAE’s east coast and a resting stop between the Arabian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.

In this conversation, Shaikha and Faysal retrace the dialogues and the quiet but probing exchanges that came to define the work. Together, they reflect on the paradoxes of land art—how we, as artists, curators, and commissioners of public art, intervene in a space that must simultaneously be preserved, how we leave our imprint on land that has already borne witness to centuries of histories.

Faysal Tabbarah: I want to start with unpacking the processes you use when working through land art, and especially those within the mountains. We have talked a lot about the hikes that you take alone within that landscape, which, as I understand it, are genuinely unstructured. I have always thought of these hikes as an integral part of your art practice, even if, in the moment of the hike, they do not result in a direct material outcome. Can you reflect on how these unstructured hikes help you conceive of your land art work?

Shaikha Al Mazrou: The unstructured hikes I take in the mountains are indeed a crucial part of my artistic process. They are not mapped out with intention or control; rather, they are a response to the landscape itself. For me, these hikes are a way of listening, of allowing the terrain to guide me, to speak to me in its own quiet language. The experience of being immersed in the landscape, without the constraint of a defined structure, mirrors my approach to land art—letting the environment shape and inform my work.

In a sense, my work is about asking questions, not providing answers. It’s not about moving forward or backward; but about recognising and occupying a stillness in between; the quiet moments where the land offers its own narrative, where we can simply observe, connect, and reflect. When I’m in the mountains, it’s not about finding answers; it’s about allowing space for curiosity, for pause, for reflection.

FT: Coincidentally, when we started to think about the title of the artwork, we immediately gravitated towards the idea that the artwork you were working on was a pause, both as a material object in landscape, a subtle interference if you will, but also as a prompt for those who chance upon it. In speaking to you right now, I realise that we have not really spoken on what happens before and after the pause––if this project is one manifestation of a stillness in between, as you just described, do you think about the loose threads that come before and after the pause?

“The discs become portals, beacons that direct one’s attention to the land around them—to the physical remnants, cultural markers, and the stories embedded within the landscape. In these pauses, I want visitors to reflect on the land’s historical and cultural significance and consider their place within that continuum.”

SAM: You are right, the stillness in between is not just a pause; it is a space of transition, a threshold where meaning is shaped but not yet resolved. In thinking about this project as an instance of such a stillness.

Before the pause, there is motion: the body moving through the terrain, the accumulation of unspoken histories, the slow erosion of rock and time. There are loose threads in the form of the footsteps that led to the work, the shifting light that recontextualizes it, the geological and cultural layers that predate its presence. After the pause, there is dispersion, the return to movement, a settled reorientation of attention. The stillness, then, is not an isolated event but a delicate hinge between past and future, presence and absence, intervention and surrender.

FT: This brings us back to your process. The site we worked in was relatively large and nebulous, almost absent of clear boundaries. At the same time, your first response to the project took a much smaller form not bigger than a human’s palm – I am referring to the cutouts you produced to convey your ideas. Despite the looseness of your first sketches, the scalar relationships you were seeking with the landscape were fairly obvious, even if that remained unspoken or undrawn, until we had to actually engineer the artwork. How do you see these extreme scales as undifferentiated?

SAM: In Deliberate Pauses, I used the simplest of materials, five red discs, each one placed thoughtfully but organically along a hiking path. I didn’t impose rigid rules or formal constraints on these discs. Sometimes they are vertical, sometimes horizontal. They interact with the land’s curves and edges, its uneven surfaces and natural formations. I wanted the discs to work with the land’s own intricacies, amplifying and negotiating with the space they inhabit, rather than asserting their presence over it.

The simplicity of these discs, their unassuming nature, is intentional. It’s not about the materiality of the object itself, but about how it invites interaction. It draws people into the landscape, encouraging them to pause and reflect. Just as my hikes don’t have an agenda, the work doesn’t demand answers. The discs become portals, beacons that direct one’s attention to the land around them—toward forgotten aspects of Hatta, to physical remnants, cultural markers, and the stories embedded within the landscape. In these pauses, I want visitors to reflect on the land’s historical and cultural significance and consider their place within that continuum.

In negotiating scale and site, throughout our conversations, we kept returning to the tension between the vastness of the landscape and the intimacy of the intervention. My initial sketches were small, almost hand-sized, yet the final work had to engage with the monumental presence of the Hajar Mountains. Looking back, how do you think our approach to scale evolved, and do you see the final work as amplifying or resisting the grandeur of its surroundings?

“Hatta is a historical gateway space that is not urban, nor fully rural, but also long inhabited – essentially, a threshold. Thresholds allow for vagueness to reign for some time, until more clarity needs to emerge.”

FT: I appreciate you tying this project to the idea thresholds, or a state of in-betweenness, as you describe it. If you remember, in one of my first prompts, I described Hatta as a historical gateway space that is not urban, nor fully rural, but also long inhabited – essentially, a threshold. When one is in the middle of contending with making a physical object happen, early conversation tends to be forgotten, or cast aside for more immediate concerns.

That being said, on reflection, it seems to me that thresholds allow for vagueness to reign for some time, until more clarity needs to emerge. In the end, the landscape told what it needs to receive as an insertion. Fortunately, despite some technical manoeuvring during construction, these two forces were not in opposition.

I want to say, the technique was also generative for the both of us. At one moment in the process, you spoke with an engineer who told you about a technical process in infrastructural works, specifically in constructing tunnels if I am not mistaken, and he suggested that you shave the mountain. I remember your initial reaction to that was extremely visceral, as though he was able to describe the project in ways we were both trying to search for. What resonated for you there?

SAM: When the engineer referred to the process as "shaving the mountain," it struck me in a different way, one that tied directly into my long-standing interest in geology and the layers of time that shape the landscape. The idea of “shaving” made me think of the geological processes that unfold slowly over time, where layers of minerals are worn down or exposed, revealing the history of the earth. In many ways, it’s a delicate, continuous process—one that speaks to how time and forces beyond our control gradually shape and re-shape the mountain's form.

That conversation made me reflect on the landscape in a new way—about the imprint we leave when we alter it, and the loss of something essential that occurs in that process. There’s an intensity to that interaction that I think I’ve been trying to capture, but from a more delicate, subtle standpoint. At the same time, I couldn’t help but recognise the contradiction in myself: while I seek to work with the land gently, to allow it to guide my practice, I also understand the desire, perhaps even the necessity, to assert control over it. There’s an undeniable tension between the urge to intervene and the need to preserve. I feel it in my work every day: the impulse to shape, to alter, to leave something of my mark on the landscape, while simultaneously resisting the urge to dominate or erase what is already there.

So, while the idea of "shaving the mountain" felt jarring to me in its implications, it also offered a new language to think about the friction between the natural and the man-made, and the very real impact of human presence on the land. There’s something almost paradoxical in how we engage with the land: we shape it and, in doing so, we leave something behind. This process, though necessary in some contexts, feels inherently disruptive, as though we are carving away at something sacred. Yet, I can’t help but feel that same impulse when I walk the land, when I create within it—it’s a way of negotiating between leaving something behind and honouring the land’s original form. In this way, I embrace both the delicate and the jarring aspects of transformation, acknowledging that sometimes intervention and subtlety can exist in parallel, each influencing the other in unexpected ways.

FT: While the contradictions you are outlining are unavoidable, they must be confronted. They are also amplified within the context of land art, especially public land art.

SAM: Artists create land art interventions because they seek to establish a deeper, more intimate connection with the natural world. These interventions allow artists to respond directly to the landscape, not just in a visual sense, but in a way that engages with the land’s history, its texture, and its narrative.

You asked me about the process, so I want to also ask you about your process. So much of this work was rooted in site visits, endless conversations, and intuitive decision-making. Yet, curating also involves translating these ephemeral moments into something legible for others. How did you balance the open-ended, experiential nature of the work with the need to frame it within a broader narrative for the public?

FT: I find that I work through a very wide spectrum, almost simultaneously, to communicate on the work’s terms, and not necessarily my terms.

On one end of the spectrum, I think of myself as a conduit between the artist, their work, those who help make the work happen, and those who receive the work. It is a maximalist approach, which simply means, a lot of text, sometimes descriptive and sometimes reflective, but also a lot of visual documentation. To a certain extent, I sometimes think that revealing how work is thought about and physically made is more important than the work itself. Work does not appear out of thin air, and that there are many, many people and machines involved in making work happen, and they all make it better along the way.

The second approach is much more minimalist––it is about knowing when to take a step back and letting the work speak for itself to all those involved: the artist, the audience, but those who support in the making process along the way. It is easier to step back at the end of a project, it is harder, but probably more important, to step back during the project. I’m working on getting better at that.

SAM: Your practice often explores the intersection of built environments and speculative interventions. Given this, how did your architectural perspective shape the way we thought about object placement, spatial relationships, and the ways people move through and interact with Deliberate Pauses? Did this project challenge or expand any of your existing approaches to site and material?

FT: At the risk of sounding reductive, what I learned most from working with you on this project is to be slower, to take many pauses.

This interview was orchestrated and written by Gautami Reddy for Alserkal Arts Foundation, on the occasion of the launch of Deliberate Pauses—developed in collaboration with Dubai Culture & Arts Authority and dedicated to shaping the UAE’s evolving public art landscape.