Expo 2020 Public Artworks
Expo 2020 features a major new public installation of 42 artworks by Folio artists Nick Hayes, Sarah Maxwell, Rui Ricardo, Siku and Owen Davey.
image: Line art designs for five of the medallions.
The prestigious Expo 2020 international festival brings together almost 200 national pavilions for a 6-month celebration in Dubai. The site’s central Al Wasl Plaza, home to the Expo’s iconic dome pavilion, is ringed by dozens of bronze medallions set into the ground.
image: Aerial view of Al Wasl Plaza, with the medallions visible as discs inset into the floor.
image: Details of four of the medallions.
Known as the ‘Beacons of Al Wasl’, the medallions tell the story of Dubai, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2021; there is a medallion to mark each of the 42 years between the unification of the UAE in 1971 and 2013, the year that Dubai was awarded the 2020 Expo.
image: Visitors at Al Wasl Plaza.
The five Folio artists selected for the flagship installation created all 42 medallion illustrations as line art before the designs were handed over to the bronze foundry for casting. The metre-wide beacons were then polished and laid into the floor of the central plaza in thematic groupings, where they will remain as a permanent expression of both Dubai’s history and its future vision.
Expo 2020 Dubai, 1 October 2021 to 31 March 2022.
The ‘Beacons of Al Wasl’ medallions are documented in Expo 2020’s Site Themes Architecture catalogue, published by Assouline.
To find out more about each artist, view their portfolios:
Nick Hayes
Sarah Maxwell
Rui Ricardo
Siku
Owen Davey
