Book of Sand

I once heard of a fighter pilot on a training mission above the Empty Quarter who spotted a structure emerging from the sand below. When he returned the next day, the structure was gone — lost beneath sand that had folded over it like pages of a book, reclaiming what once was.

The sand chooses what truths to tell and what secrets remain myth: a cycle of revelation and loss as the present sweeps over the past in an attempt to give shape to the future.

Discoveries in archaeology — from tool to statue, temple to dwelling — go beyond the study of objects and spaces. They are attempted readings of the volumes of sand swept away while unearthing the object from its contextual home. The result is missing pages across a looted cultural landscape, a historical narrative rendered illegible as the sand that once cradled it is prematurely and artificially eroded.

Displaced, the sand travels towards our urban spaces — cities that have also lost touch with their purpose and contextual setting. There it finds itself trapped within a rigid urban language. If ignored, these lost visitors will eventually overwhelm the dwellings we call home, leaving us as structures that may one day be glimpsed, temporarily, from above.

My intention is to reconstitute what has been lost: a dutiful rereading that gives shelter to the narratives that once lived among the grains of sand.