Just two months ago, I was wandering through the safe corridors of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, enchanted by its aesthetics and architecture. Sheltered from the sun beneath Jean Nouvel’s dome and refreshed by the cool ocean breeze, I was experiencing the perfect harmony of art and architecture as if in a dream. War was the last thing on my mind and war-related works were, at that moment, merely frames and aesthetic materials. "Where was the art in these aestheticized war pieces?” Was I asking myself this question while gazing at Napoleon’s rearing horse or the Ottoman cavalryman’s gleaming armor in the museum’s sterile atmosphere? I don’t think it even crossed my mind, and who could have imagined the reality we’re living today. In just eight weeks, the global agenda underwent such a rupture that everything I had coded as an "artwork” that day has transformed into a reality bursting out of the very room where it was displayed. As Abu Dhabi’s unshakable "safe haven” image began to crumble amid the bombs falling on the region and the military activity, my museum visit took on a completely different meaning in my mind.

Not just a museum

It is a cultural reflection of the strategic weight that comes with the emirate’s role as a center of foreign policy and security. The museum building itself is a massive document in its own, featuring texts carved into the marble panels on the exterior walls of the galleries by Jenny Holzer. Here, Holzer selected texts in three different languages to translate the dialogue between civilizations into a physical continuity: Ibn Khaldun’s 14th-century "Mukaddimah," drawn from the collection of the Atıf Efendi Library in Istanbul, a Sumerian-Akkadian creation myth from Mesopotamia and "The Essays" of Michel de Montaigne.

The presence of the "Mukaddime" – considered the foundation of economics, sociology and the philosophy of history – on that marble surface takes on a much deeper meaning today amid the upheavals in the region. As the words of ancient Mesopotamia met the essays of the French Enlightenment on the same wall, the museum promised us a "universal and shared memory.” Yet while these texts appeared as a triumph of civilization during my peaceful visit two months ago, in today’s war-torn landscape, every single letter has transformed into a fragile legacy that must be debated.

Museum’s innovative layout

The museum’s most distinctive feature is that it groups works not by country but thematically, based on "shared human experiences.” The juxtaposition of a small statue of the Egyptian goddess Isis from 400-800 B.C. with a 14th-century figure of the Virgin Mary from France in the same display case under the theme of "motherhood” is the clearest example of this "mix-and-match” approach. Likewise, gold funeral masks from Syria, Peru and China demonstrate a shared response to death. While I was there, these displays were curatorial successes that supported the idea of humanity as a single family. But today, the geopolitical reality outside explicitly rejects this narrative of a "universal family.”

This artificial and sterile atmosphere of peace created in museum galleries clashes with the sounds of bombs falling on the territories of the emirates.

I seek an answer to the question, "Can war be aestheticized?” through the "Art of War” section and Jacques-Louis David’s painting "Napoleon Crossing the Alps.” Depicting Napoleon as a figure riding a rearing horse with the wind at his back, this painting transforms military power into a seamless aesthetic. In the "Art of War” section, a 15th-century Ottoman cavalry armor serves a similar purpose: transforming steel and brute strength into a work of art.

Two months ago, these suits of armor were prehistoric, obsolete design objects. But in this new era, where Abu Dhabi’s ability to defend itself is being tested and the very notion of "safety” is being questioned, the feeling evoked by those suits of armor and swords is not one to simply glance at and move on, nor to pause and examine for a few seconds. What echoes in those galleries today is not the dusty pages of history; it is the cold reality of the defense instinct that has remained unchanged for thousands of years and the physical threat.

The place where this harsh reality strikes hardest is the Dia al-Azzawi section of the Picasso exhibition, which features the Iraq intervention we know so well. Azzawi’s massive work, "Elegy to My Trapped City” (2011), narrates the region’s unending suffering through its fragmented, monochromatic connection to "Guernica." As Azzawi captured the destruction of post-2003 Iraq on canvas, I spent a few minutes with this large-scale work, wandering among the figures and observing it as a "distant drama.” Today, the bombs falling on the streets of the UAE have turned Azzawi’s fierce brushstrokes and fragmented forms into today’s main news. I don’t know why this work was selected when the exhibition was planned, but perhaps placed there as a "reminder” of "Guernica," it has transformed into a vivid depiction of the situation we find ourselves in today.

What I’ve come to understand in the short time since my visit to the Louvre Abu Dhabi is this: Art does not provide physical protection in moments of struggle for survival. Jean Nouvel’s dome, with its 7,850 stars, was not built to stop missiles, but to manage light. However, I believe art’s true function should be to remind us, in that atmosphere of insecurity, "what we are living for.” As Abu Dhabi loses its unshakable "safe” status, the works in the museum have shed their sterile, distant positions and transformed into witnesses of the present. Napoleon’s horse is now more restless, the Ottoman armor feels heavier, and Azzawi’s elegy comes from much closer. The architectural harmony that enchanted me two months ago has given its place to a reality permeated by the scent of gunpowder. It is now impossible to view the works merely as framed beauties; each has become a symbol of a survival cry that begins where security ends.

Furthermore, as a reference, in 2017, the award-winning Nigerian writer Ben Okri was asked to write a poem to celebrate the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The author describes the museum as a "21st-century marvel” as follows: "Universal ideals, artistic visions, and reality.”

Looking at this poem he wrote for the museum’s opening in March 2026, his words – "We are opening up to a new time; we must renew ourselves” – serve as a lesson the Emirates must learn from art moving forward.

Time for renewal

We are opening a new time.

Every now and again, we must renew

Ourselves as a museum,

As a vision, as a people.

This is a time for renewal.

Time to dream higher.