One horizon, many worlds
Echoes of Sharjah unites lyrical photographs and vsurreal art to tell the emirate’s story.
By Anna Seaman
It was in 2023, at the Xposure International Photography Festival, that the seeds of collaboration were sown. Walking among the exhibitions, His Highness Sheikh Sultan bin Ahmed Al Qasimi, Deputy Ruler of Sharjah and Chairman of Sharjah Media Council, and an avid photographer himself, stopped at a striking digital installation by Dutch artist Marcel van Luit. As their conversation deepened, centred on process, craft, and the role of imagination, the idea arose to merge His Highness’s photographs with van Luit’s distinctively surreal visual language.
The resulting work, unveiled at Xposure this January, feels as though it belongs to a bygone era. It seems drawn from somewhere between a primordial, celestial imagination and the meticulous lighting and tonal harmony of the 17th-century Dutch Masters. It seems to have, as van Luit puts it, an old soul.
“I am often told that there is something ancient about my work,” he says. “Like it comes from somewhere beyond me. This is something I can relate to because it feels like the art came to me by accident; like it was meant to happen.”
Van Luit is a Dutch contemporary artist specialising in digital and physical painting. However, until 2013, he was working in Haren, a small town in the northern Netherlands, as a social worker and training to be a teacher. That year, he was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré Syndrome—a disease that left him completely paralysed for 18 months. “I was frozen in bed with only my heart and lungs working,” he recalls. “I only had my mind in which to wander.”
Marcel van Luit is a Dutch multidisciplinary artist known for his surrealist works. Here, with the work What did we sign up for..? Acrylic and oil pastel on linen.
As he slowly recovered in a rehabilitation centre, the only way he had to connect with his family and friends was through photographs and a laptop. The laptop became both a portal to the outside world and a medium of expression for the inner world in which he had been submerged for all those months. He started experimenting with photo-editing software, constructing digital collages where the layers of colour, light, and texture fused to make wildly imaginative, dreamlike compositions.
At first, his art was a way of occupying his long hours in recovery, but it later became a balm to the strains on his marriage. It was his wife who first saw his talent as something that needed to be shared. “She found a lab to print my work, organised exhibitions, and my life changed 200%,” says van Luit.
He quickly gained prominence for his distinctive aesthetic, which often uses the natural world as his primary inspiration and where wild animals take on the role of protagonist. In his fantastical compositions, reality and imagination meet in unexpected ways: a white tiger’s majestic features subtly meld with the delicate Delft Blue of a porcelain vase; a lion’s mane unfurls as a halo of wildflowers; and a chimpanzee, its gaze fixed intently on the viewer, appears to rise from a constellation of butterflies. Often presented at large scale—and at times animated into short, surreal sequences on LED screens—the works are mesmerising.
The presentation at Xposure 2026, titled Echoes of Sharjah: One Horizon, Many Worlds, transforms His Highness’s lyrical photographs into a layered art experience.
His Highness Sheikh Sultan bin Ahmed Al Qasimi and Marcel van Luit at the work’s unveiling at Xposure in January. Above, surrounding the artwork, immersive digital installations brought the themes to life. Photos: Sharjah Government Media Bureau.
At the heart of the work is a photograph of Sharjah’s Central Souq. Yet in van Luit’s dreamscape, only traces of the original architecture remain. A night sky where planets rotate appears beneath the grand arch and camels traverse the rooftop. There are flying books drifting through the foreground and Arabic script punctuates the composition. A full moon casts its glow from the upper façade, while the surrounding sky is filled with ancient maps and an astrolabe—visual markers of the region’s historical role as a crossroads for astronomy, trade, and knowledge exchange.
The work unfolds across five vertical panels, each reflecting an aspect of Sharjah’s unique identity. In the first, the dome of Al Noor Mosque represents Islamic identity, while date palm trees and baskets filled with spices and goods evoke Sharjah’s vibrant trading past and its connection to the world. The Arabian oryx and falcon appear in the second panel, which is a tribute to the natural world. High above, a richly decorated carpet speaks to the region’s prized craftsmanship and artistry. Here, nature and culture are in harmony. In the central panel, the open book flying through the night sky symbolises how knowledge leads to discovery, and the passage of wisdom across generations. A camel caravan crossing the desert recalls not only commerce, but the exchange of ideas, culture, and spirituality.
Rich carpets, floral tiles, and architectural arches represent innovation in the fourth panel, their intricate patterns and technical forms a metaphor for the progress that grows out of tradition. The final panel brings the story into the present where a golden compass points towards the modern skyline of Sharjah. The towers are reflected in the water and palm branches frame the scene, rooting the future in heritage. The honeycomb structure of the butterfly house on Al Noor Island is both a visual tool and a symbol of how art, architecture, and the natural world sit side by side in Sharjah.
Left, Marcel van Luit’s work, Juno. Right a digital work from his Modern Heritage series. Courtesy of Marcel van Luit.
While the work was carefully considered, the process of making it was largely instinctual, explains van Luit. “I was inspired by the story of Sharjah, and I knew I wanted to represent it across five panels, each telling a different facet of the story, but I didn’t have a sketch or a fully defined plan to work from. I had the composition in my head, but the process of realising it was like jamming. It’s difficult to describe, but I call it tapping into the creative flow. I connect with all sorts of visual elements from heritage to nature, architecture and colours, then I use digital painting techniques to weave it all together,” he says. “Many times, people will see things in my work that I didn’t plan for, but that is not surprising to me anymore, because I work intuitively.”
Surrounding the artwork at Xposure in January, immersive digital installations brought the themes to life. They moved, responded, and invited the viewer to step inside the narrative rather than simply observe it. “Art not as an object, but as an experience,” van Luit says.
Through his paintings and digital works, van Luit has attracted many fans. His clientele includes celebrities such as Drake, Lionel Richie, Paris Hilton, Post Malone, and Naomi Campbell, and his work has been showcased in Times Square in New York during the Frieze Art Fair. At Art Basel Miami Beach in December, he presented When the Earth Breathes, an interactive, immersive digital-art installation that responded in real time to visitors touching living plants—a meditation on our connection with nature in the digital age.
It is easy to see why his works connect with audiences. Van Luit approaches each composition as a visual riddle to solve, instinctively searching for lines, symmetry, and colour relationships—and that sense of mystery carries through to the viewer’s experience. We begin in one place, and as we trace his meandering vision, we find ourselves transported somewhere entirely different. It is this ability to bring us on a journey that casts the story of Sharjah in a new, fascinating light.
