A British artist has taken over the ballroom of a luxury hotel in Dubai to create the largest painting ever made on canvas.
Following completion next month, the 1,980-square-foot (more than 21,000-square-foot) artwork will be cut in separate panels, leaving painter Sacha Jafri up for auction in hopes of raising $ 30 million for charity.
Titled “The Journey of Humanity”, the work is roughly equivalent in size to four basketball courts of NBA regulation. It is being painted at Atlantis The Palm Hotel in Dubai, where Jafri has been based for more than five months – at a time when the United Arab Emirates was introducing lockdown measures in the city to slow down the spread of Covid-19.
“I was stuck in Dubai and I wanted to do something gripping, something that would mean something,” he said on a video call from the hotel. “Something that could potentially make a really big difference.”
Pyong Sumaria
Like the brushwork and drip painting of Jafri’s own abstract style, which he calls “magical realism”, the painting has work submitted online by children from all over the world. Focused on themes of connection, separation, and isolation during the pandemic, children’s contributions were printed on paper and recorded in the painting, where they are concentrated in eight circular “portals” on the canvas.
“I asked the children of the world to submit their artwork – how they feel now, their emotions,” Jafri said. “We, as adults, find this hard. We have found the last five months very difficult, very confusing, very frustrating and quite frightening. But imagine how a 4-year-old child feels.”
‘Humanity Inspired’
The painting is expected to take 24 weeks to complete and consists of four sections. The first represents “the soul of the earth,” Jafri said, adding that the others refer to nature, humanity, and the wider universe.
Once finished, the artwork will go on tour, allowing it to hang vertically in Dubai’s frame-shaped skyscraper and projected onto the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. The painting will then be cut into 60 separate pieces, measuring about 30 square meters each, to be framed and sold separately at an auction in Dubai this December.
“We aim to raise $ 30 million that will go to helping the world’s poorest children with education, connectivity, health and sanitation,” Jafri said, adding: “Every person who buys a panel , will (not only) own a piece of the greatest painting ever made in the world, but they will own a piece of history, because what we do with that money is enormous.
Artist Sacha Jafri at work, in a hotel room in Dubai, on what is expected to be the world’s largest painting Credit: Pyong Sumaria
“I can see big art collectors, big investors, big philanthropists spending up to $ 3 million or $ 4 million per panel.”
The project is part of the Humanity Inspired initiative, which works with charities including Unicef and Unesco to help children in need.
The 43-year-old artist, who was trained at the elite British boarding school Eton alongside Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, says the project has been endorsed by more than 100 high-profile figures including Eva Longoria and Rita Ora.
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