We decided late in the afternoon to drive to Zekreet from Doha to see Richard Serra’s art installation East-West/West-East—a series of 4 rectangular sheets of steel, each measuring 16 metres in height and spaced 250 metres apart from one another. My travelling companion and driver was the husband of my childhood friend and despite having lived in Doha for over 10 years, Al, had yet to see the art piece that was commissioned by the Qatari government nor, to date, had he driven on the desert.
To get to Zekreet we had to drive about 90 km west of Doha, a mere hour on the highway and easy to navigate. Then, with an additional 5 km to go to get to Serra’s art installation, the road literally ends—and there is just desert.
Now this particular stretch of desert is not the same as driving on a soft sandy beach. As a result of the strong winds there is an unusual geology whereby the softer sand has blown away leaving a harder, rockier surface. The kind of surface that would easily blow a tire, or four if you weren’t paying attention.
So, we kept our eyes peeled directly ahead on the ground. I offered calm but firm warnings of what perils lay ahead on our driving route, all the while, keeping an eye on my watch confirming daylight slipping away. Al responded admirably to my warnings with split second wheel turning, but becoming visibly anxious as the sun dipped on the horizon.
One would surmise that finding 4 monstrously high pieces of metal, 10 times the height of a human raising up in a flat desert would be pretty easy to find. But Serra’s plates are only a mere 10 centimetres thick and span a distance across a kilometer of desert not visible from the roadway. Without a road to guide us, no signs or maps to East-West/West-East, we were entirely dependent on following previously made tracks in the sand, that is, if we could see them.
After almost an hour of driving, zigzagging to preserve our tires and in all likelihood driving in circles, we were disoriented, and kept missing these monoliths of steel. That is, until we all but drove into one of the steel plates located in the middle of the art installation.
Once you find one piece of the art, the other three are easy to find as they follow an imaginary centre line between two gypsum hills. We drove the kilometer from the first piece to the last, then walked around the steel plates, feeling even more ridiculous that we had this much trouble finding them given their enormous stature.
Serra has said that East West/West East gave a sense of perspective to a place where once there was only emptiness which is of course a parallel to the transformation of Qatar. I am so pleased we eventually found our way to Serra’s art as it personified my travels in Qatar. A place where the landscape is changing rapidly with innovative, unconventional architecture rising up from the desert. Qatar’s architecture is in itself an art installation just on a larger canvas and, quite frankly, a bit easier to find.