Situating the city: Charlie Koolhaas views metros through prism of art in Dubai show

The curtains are just down on artist, photographer and writer Charlie Koolhaas's solo exhibition City Lust at Jossa, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai (Sept. 18-21).

- Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer

A panoramic view of the works. Charlie Koolhaas with the mike. Looking at a composition.

In 2020, she published City Lust with Scheidegger & Spiess; the title was borrowed from a perfume she once discovered in Gift Village, a humble corner shop in Dubai. The book was more than a collection of photographs; it was a living archive of two decades spent moving through the connective tissues of the globalised world. London, Guangzhou, Lagos, Dubai and Houston - five cities in which Koolhaas has lived, worked or immersed herself - became the central stage of her inquiry. Each one served as a node in the apotheosis of globalisation, and also a witness to its unravelling.

It was for the first time in Dubai that City Lust expanded off the page and into space. Charlie's solo at Alserkal Avenue brought together her photography, sculptural experiments and couture works, transforming the gallery into a sprawling stage, where images collided with architecture, fashion, and lived experience. City Lust was conceived as both photographic documentary and written testimony - a dialogue between words and images. With her characteristic blend of humour, intimacy and sociological observation, Koolhaas captured the rapid transformations taking place in these five cities as they become bonded by trade, migration and the rise of a shared global culture.