Architect Dima Srouji has used glass bricks to construct a miniature waiting room inside the Fenaa Alawwal cultural centre in Riyadh to visualise the bureaucratic limbo faced by displaced Palestinians.
On show in Riyadh's diplomatic quarter, the scale model of an embassy waiting room combines tiered seating into a shape resembling a water clock ? a kind of ancient hourglass that measures time through the flow of water rather than sand.
By constructing the installation from 812 frosted glass bricks, Srouji hoped to illustrate the experiences of refugees and people lacking proper documentation, who are forced to put their lives on hold while waiting on official paperwork.
Dima Srouji created The Water Clock for the Fenaa Alawwal cultural centre "The installation is designed as this waiting room where people can gather and think about the act of waiting for papers," said Srouji, who was born in Palestine, but forced to leave alongside her family during the second intifada, a major uprising by Palestinians against the Israeli occupation between 2000 and 2005.
"The Water Clock recreates the universal experience of waiting at an embassy, waiting for a visa, waiting for a permit, waiting to be admitted," Srouji added.
More specifically, the project also speaks to an experience that Srouji says has become almost universal for Palestinians since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when around 700,000 people ? more than half of Palestine's Arab population ? fled or were ...