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The visual identity and accompanying promotional materials for the National Pavilion of the United Arab Emirates’ exhibition, Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim: Between Sunrise and Sunset, at the Biennale Arte 2022 in Venice, were conceived and developed together with Larry Issa, a frequent collaborator on exhibition branding and English/Arabic publication projects.
Drawing upon the artist Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim’s iconic cypher motifs, the identity creates a playful interaction between these distinctive shapes and the letterforms of the exhibition’s title. Wherever the identity appears, its unconventional typography stretches from one edge to the other, spanning the canvas like the sunlit hours of the day and evoking the peaks of a mountainous horizon. Sunrise and sunset are represented by contrasting colour palettes and each instance of the identity has twin “sunrise” and “sunset” variations.
The bold identity appeared across a variety of applications during the Venice Biennale, including canvas tote bags, posters, and banner ads on the Venice waterbuses.
Within the exhibition space, in order to focus attention on Ibrahim’s biomorphic sculptures, a pared-down, greyscale version of the branding was used for the wall text.
Read more about the exhibition here.
