Useless Palace: visit Mleiha desert in Metaverse

Dubai’s Inloco Gallery has launched Useless Palace, a virtual exhibition project. Viewers from around the world can explore the works of ten international artists resulting from an expedition to the Mleiha Desert, as well as walk through the desert on their own, as treasure hunters in search of artefacts.

The online exhibition Useless Palace, developed by hptx interactive technology studio on the Spatial platform, offers a reflection on the essence of nomadism and the eternal search for home. The project recreates the site of an abandoned village where a group of artists have been visiting, creating art inspired by the desert and found artefacts.

The digital project also includes an in-depth online relocation of the exhibition Useless Palace, which took place in the physical space of the Inloco Gallery in March and was a report of this fascinating artistic intervention. The participating artists are Filippo Minelli, Lokher, Neda Salmanpour, Anton Selone, Dusto, Maxim Ima, Turben, Xeato, Ivan Ilinskii and Sergei Kk.

To visit the exhibition you can do a simple registration on the Spatial website, then choose an avatar. The gallery can be accessed via any computer or smartphone, as well as VR glasses. The project can be visited as a group or individually, and access is free.

Sprawling in the emirate of Sharjah, Mleiha is known to still hold the secrets of the region’s ancient culture. The local rocky mountains are one of the oldest archaeological sites in the world.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the site of Mleiha may have been home to forests and ponds but now anyone can become an amateur palaeontologist and find fossils and even coins from the time of Alexander the Great.

The Mleiha Desert can take you back in time 65 million years ago when the movement of tectonic plates pushed up the mountains from the sea floor. You can even see, touch and examine the fossilised remains of sea creatures from this period.

The lush backdrop of golden sand dunes also reveals another geological marvel, Mount Jebel Mleiha, rising out of the earth’s upper mantle made up of igneous and volcanic rocks rich in iron and magnesium.

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