Dubai, UAE, April 2023 – On April 3, the Inloco Gallery launched “Useless Palace,” a virtual exhibition project. During the launch event, audiences from all over the world were able to see the artworks of ten artists from different disciplines who participated in an expedition to the Mleiha desert. Guests were also able to explore the desert as if they were archaeologists looking for artifacts.

The online exhibition “Useless Palace,” developed by an interactive technology studio hptx on the Spatial platform, offers an opportunity to reflect on the essence of nomadism and the eternal search for home. This project is the recreation of the site of an abandoned village where a group of artists stayed to create art inspired by the desert and the discovered artifacts. It is also comprised of the carefully crafted online version of the “Useless Palace” exhibition that was hosted in the physical space of the Inloco Gallery in March 2023 and became the report on this international artistic intervention.

The exhibition opened in the Spatial metaverse on April 3 at 8:00 PM, and at 8:30 PM, there was a screening of the documentary “Useless Palace” (the location was the garage in the desert). To visit the exhibition, visitors needed to sign up on the Spatial website, which was easy, and then choose their avatar. The gallery could be accessed via any computer or smartphone, as well as a VR headset. The exhibition space consisted of three areas.

The first exhibition hall was the gallery, where visitors could see more than 25 paintings, sculptures, and art objects created by artists based on their journey to the desert. Some of the pieces were animated and could be brought to life by standing in a certain spot in the virtual space. Visitors could invite their friends to the hall, arrange meetings and discuss the exhibition online together directly in the virtual space.

The second area was the desert. Guests could walk through the abandoned village, listening to the sound of the wind, stumbling upon a tumbleweed, or even ending up in a sandstorm. From anywhere in the world, it was possible to see where the artists created their pieces, how they transformed the abandoned houses and the swimming pool left in the middle of the village, and what art was created from the discovered objects. The third spot was the construction zone, where the documentary “Useless Palace” premiered online.

The participating artists are: Filippo Minelli / Lokher / Neda Salmanpour / Anton Selone / Dusto / Maxim Ima / Turben / Xeato / Ivan Ilinskii / Sergei Kk

Anastasia Nesterova, producer of the virtual exhibition project Useless Palace:

We are growing the seeds (impulse) of a sincere rebellious spirit of truthfulness through street art. The main goal is to build a safe space for dialog, some kind of bridge between multicultural art forms, between digital and physical, between sites and humans, between white box galleries, and the true vibe of the desert. We invite you to enter the multidimensional site-specific immersive art experience to reconnect with yourself and meet Inloco artists.

Maria Kobyakova, creative producer of the interactive studio hptx:

You don’t have to buy a ticket to Dubai to visit an exhibition in the middle of the desert. Emerging technology helps bring contemporary art closer to the audience. The intention of our studio’s work was to virtually reproduce the conditions in which the artists’ pieces were created. We scanned some of the works, created animations for various pieces, thus elaborating on the artists’ ideas, incorporated gaming mechanics, and finally put everything on the Spatial platform, which made it possible for anyone to visit the gallery.

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