DUBAI: UAE-based conceptual artist Moey talks about his interactive installation that was recently on show at Sikka Art and Design Platform in Dubai. I’ve been a Dubai resident for 15 years. I felt that if I’m going to call this country my home, I’d better give back to the nation through what I do best — my art. When Sikka put out open calls for artists to participate, I decided to celebrate the UAE’s legacy of attracting people from all over the world, who come here with their hopes and dreams of creating a better future. To capture the theme of being away from home and finding a new one elsewhere, I decided to build an oversized traveller’s sack with Persian carpets supported by a bamboo stick suspended in mid-air. The concept was inspired by the buqsa/jhola (‘bundle’ or ‘bag’ in Arabic/Hindi) carried by travellers to hold their bare essentials in the olden days. The challenge was to get the flexible carpet material to stand upright. After a few trials, I found that inserting a steel-and-wire mesh sandwiched between the carpets worked. Early on, I realized that, if I was going to tell the story of immigrants, then I should include them in the artwork. So I knocked on my neighbours’ doors in The Greens and introduced my art project. We made a WhatsApp group and word spread. Soon my home was filled with people of all ages. From my neighbour’s nine-year-old daughter, who helped with the stitching, to her teenage brother who assisted in the drilling to make the wooden platform, to residents who cooked for us and let us use their space. We became one big family of 40 people while creating this artwork. Urbanization and modern life have isolated people in cities and I believe we need more such community projects. At Sikka, we had an overwhelming response. The visitors innately became a part of the artwork as they would attempt to hold the bamboo stick. As they peeped inside, they met their own reflection from the mirrors fitted at the bottom. Depending on the nationality of the visitor, we also played a range of music, from Bollywood to Arabic to Turkish, to evoke a sense of nostalgia in them as they interacted with “Migrant Minds.”