Zayed National Museum
Turning curatorial ambition into immersive storytelling for the UAE’s national museum.
Over two years at Squint/Opera, I helped translate detailed curatorial briefs into tangible spatial experiences, shaping narrative, visual direction and production across the museum’s linear media, while leading key work including the Our Beginnings gallery and Through Our Nature.
ROLE
Creative Director
CREATED AT
Squint/Opera
FORMAT
Immersive museum media
LOCATION
Abu Dhabi, UAE
From brief to experience
The architecture and curatorial stories were already taking shape, but many of the media experiences still had to be made tangible.
We audited and re-briefed the content, identified what was missing, challenged spatial and projection assumptions where needed, and translated curatorial intent into stories, visual approaches and production-ready ideas.
Through Our Nature
A 20-minute immersive film unfolding across seven large-scale LED screens.
The challenge was to tell a story of the UAE through nature without making either a tourism film or a natural-history documentary. Instead, landscape became a way into culture, connecting the natural world with tools, ways of living and the relationship people formed with the land.
The result was conceived as a more poetic, meditative experience, with image and sound working across the entire space.
Our Beginnings
The gallery tells the story of the foundation of the United Arab Emirates.
Rather than treating each screen as an isolated piece of media, we approached the gallery as one connected experience, using archive, moving image and spatial sound to create an atmospheric journey through the story.
Archive in motion
Historic photographs had to work at architectural scale without pretending to be something they weren’t.
Layered animation and 3D treatments brought depth and movement to the material, while AI-assisted extensions helped images travel beyond their original frames. Generated areas were deliberately softened, keeping a clear distinction between the original archive and its interpretation.
From concept to install
My role moved from early re-briefing and story development into film and animation direction, client presentations, volumetric capture and production.
As the project developed and the team expanded, I stayed close to the work, reviewing animation, responding to revisions and making hands-on adjustments during installation when needed.
Project credits
Creative Direction: Max Italiaander at Squint/Opera
Selected work shown from Our Beginnings and Through Our Nature.
Developed with the wider Squint/Opera team and project collaborators.