Autobiography 2012- Plate Numbers
The series I am currently engaged in is akin to an autobiography. It is inspired by what I see during my travels. Numbers, for instance, are a special part of my life because I studied Mathematics, and they often attract me. As I travel from emirate to emirate, I observe car plate numbers and I am compelled to come up with mathematical equations that create relationships between them. It takes me to another world and pushes me to exercise my brain either trying to memorize them or to find correlations with equations that then make them easier to memorize. Nothing on the roads and streets excite me as much as these numbers and they are the inspiration behind this work as I attempted to collate all of them into a diary. To cure myself of this obsessive state, I documented every trip I took so that I know when and where I saw each plate. The composition of the work is based on repeating the numbers just as they appeared during my trips. Each domino piece represents a number. I chose dominoes because of their strict composition; they contain only numbers and are graphic; they are used as a popular game in Arab societies and because I also wanted to use objects that are known to different cultures. I wanted to transform dominoes from a tool of play and fun to a work of art enjoyed by the public or the viewer as they decipher the code I used, which is different from what they are used to. In using dominoes, I can use the sum of both sides in a piece rather than treat each side as a separate number.
