Past, present and future come to life on the walls

The past, present and future of Dubai is emblazoned across the walls of the new Dubai International Airport tunnel, the artist who came up with the design told Gulf News.

Mohammad Fahmi, an Iraqi New Zealander, said he tried to reflect the city's extraordinary pace of development in his ceramic designs.

The 52-year-old, who has exhibited paintings across the world, laboured for eight months to produce the dozens of pictures now on show to motorists.

The tunnel looks back into Dubai's history by illustrating traditional pastimes such as falconry and horse racing.

It also shows many of the city's most daring modern creations such as the Burj Al Arab, the Emirates Towers and the Palm.

And Fahmi has taken things a step further by gazing into the future with illustrations of the forthcoming supertram system and other still-on-the-drawing-board schemes.

In between the pictures, there are repeated shapes that Fahmi said draw from traditional Islamic art.

"Anyone driving through the tunnel can see the story from the beginning there is the desert and simple houses right through to Dubai as a new place of the future.

"If anybody asks what is famous in Dubai, they will say the Burj Al Arab, but I also show some of the older projects like the World Trade Centre.

"Because the tunnel is crossing the airport, it's very important to show Emirates, which is now a world-famous airline and part of Dubai," he said.

Fahmi took hundreds of photographs and studied books to gain the inspiration for his designs.

The ceramic tiles were made in Italy and cut by a company in the UAE.

"It was not an easy job. It was very difficult. I was given a scale to work on and I sketched by hand and on the computer," he said.

Fahmi won his first art prize more than 30 years ago and has since exhibited paintings in Moscow, London, Paris, Berlin and Sydney.

Although he came up with the design for the tunnel walls rather than physically creating the mosaics, Fahmi said he feels the same sense of artistic achievement he gets when he completes one of his abstract paintings.