Art, in the space of a day

When the sun rises over the port village of Khor Fakkan on the East coast of the United Arab Emirates, rocky mountains shroud the city in shadow. Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim was born here and grew up imagining the invisible sunset, on the distant West coast across the Indian Ocean. Between Sunrise and Sunset is a single work in which dozens of human-sized sculptures cluster in undulating colors and movements, suggesting bodies or trees, metamorphosis and mutation. The color spectrum transforms over the span of the installation: from sunrise to sunset. His papier-mâché sculptures evolve and transform into organic forms, inviting and refusing immediate figurative interpretation. Are they plants, corals, animals, humans? Are they rocks or is it a city? Often incorporating actual soil, leaves, tea, coffee and tobacco, the textures and colors of the forms derive from the raw materials used by the artist, whose practice spans nearly 40 years of experimentation and production.