Super Fence

Super Fence reimagines Under Construction (2015–16), a photographic project documenting the rapidly shifting edges of urban expansion in the UAE. Shifting focus from architectural permanence to the ephemeral, the work spotlights construction hoardings—often colourful, branded barriers that delineate development sites.

These temporary structures, whether used for advertisement or marked by the playful imprint of construction firms, are sites of unintentional expression. Devoid of fixed design codes, they are free to be yellow, pink—or both—offering a brief moment of aesthetic freedom before the built environment asserts itself.

Photographed from a single vantage point and originally conceived as a typology, individual fence panels have here been deconstructed and recomposed to form a single ‘Super Fence’. In this iteration, they act as a visual archive and speculative structure—one that reflects the eclectic energy of Alserkal Avenue and gestures toward its evolving future.

Graffiti featured in this work was created by Arcadia Blank.

Bio:

Hussain Al Moosawi is an Emirati designer, photographer, and storyteller, actively documenting the UAE’s evolving urban identity.

He began his journey in Applied Media, earning a Higher Diploma in 2004 before moving to Australia, where he studied, worked, and lived for eight years. There, he completed both his BA and MA in Communication Design.

A passionate typologist, Hussain’s work spans from researching details like the Emirati tarboosh to photographing the UAE’s diverse urban landscapes. His ongoing project, Facade to Facade, is a visual classification system of building facades across the UAE—an attempt to map the country’s architectural heterogeneity and shifting visual language.

At the core of Hussain’s practice is a relentless curiosity about the built environment. His work blurs the line between cultural production and pictorial research, offering new ways to see and understand the places we live in.