The installation presents Bahrain’s forgotten monumental maligned generation of governmental architecture. The beginning of the 20th century saw a series of somewhat appealing buildings built by the Bahraini Public Works Department. Many of these have since been eradicated or are about to be. We have recreated five of these buildings in Muharraq.

We look to these buildings not for their quality, not with nostalgia or longing. But in recreating them as objects, we allow ourselves the opportunity to exorcise the memory of poverty, uncertainty and colonial rule. By presenting these five buildings stripped of all but their architectural quality, we ask if their gradual eradication is the only way to address their troubled history. Five objects that had to be made to allow us the luxury of a painless past.