Dubai Street Museum — Satwa

The first phase of Dubai Street Museum brought a series of large murals to 2nd December Street in Satwa in 2016. The programme placed images drawn from the UAE’s history and heritage within one of Dubai’s established neighbourhoods, making the surrounding street life part of their context.

International mural artists worked alongside artists from the UAE. Different visual approaches addressed a shared cultural brief, allowing the works to form a connected route without reducing them to a single style or repeated motif.

SAN Projects’ curatorial and production work connected the artists with the buildings and practical requirements of the sites. The project established an approach that would extend into later phases of Dubai Street Museum: using existing architecture as a place for commissioned art that can be encountered in the course of ordinary city life.