Hana Shams Ahmed – “Saadiyat Island, NYC”

The other Saadiyat Island as imagined by Hana Shams Ahmed, One of fifteen islands fabricated by Greg Sholette based on ideas proposed by invited collaborators, Mixed media (paper, sand, plastic, wire, resin), 2012

Dear Greg,

Saadiyat is a desert island directly off the coast of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is also where the Louvre and Guggenheim are developing new museums using the labor of thousands of “guest workers” from nearby South-Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. The May 2009 Human Rights Watch report documented cases of “severe exploitation and abuse, in some cases amounting to forced labor.”

Some important improvements have been made since then, though working conditions are still below human rights standards in developed countries. Now imagine a previously uncharted island materializing off Pier 13 in the East River near to where the Guggenheim once planned to construct another new museum. This small, sandy island is also filled with precarious construction workers who labor in a special, extra-juridical cultural empowerment zone established in response to the art market crash of 2012. Based on my experience in the Middle East and South Asia, I imagine the inner-dialogue of one such displaced worker housed on Other Saadiyat Island:

“My son had not left my side in the first six years of his life. It had been difficult to think of a life without him. But that‘s how it has been for the last two years. Working as a construction worker was not exactly a 9 to 5 air-conditioned affair. I remember with a smile the conversations back in Bangladesh about going to the gym, trekking in the mountains of Nepal, cycling to work. All to stretch the limits of one‘s body. I have muscles now, but no mirror to look at it with. No interest to look at it either. After the twelve-hour ordeal and the food that I wouldn‘t even feed the crows back home, all I could look forward to was the bug-infested bunker. My mind keeps going back to thoughts about bringing my son here. The island is huge, so space is not a problem. He would love it. We would spend the next six months building things for us. Those buildings that we built for other people, we would finally build for us. Those buildings that we got kicked out of after the last tile was set would be ours. With thoughts of my son and big glass buildings I went to sleep.”

- Hana Shams Ahmed

Hana Shams Ahmed is a journalist and human rights activist. She lives in her native country of Bangladesh.

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