Courtesy of Erin Meekhof

        These sculptures are linguistic timelines. Each individual study represents a phoneme, or unit of sound, such as “N” or “T” in its divergent, 3,000-year evolution. Rooted in the Phoenician script, the shapes extend in different directions, bifurcating into two different ends: the Modern Roman alphabet of the English language, and the Modern Arabic Alphabet.

        The project, which in January was selected as the winner of the second annual Christo and Jeanne-Claude Award, will consist of a collection of five wooden sculptures constructed by Meekhof, to be displayed around the UAE starting March 16.

        In the fall semester of 2012, Meekhof was taking a linguistics class when she first began studying the evolution of alphabets. She was surprised to discover that Arabic and Roman alphabets have a common ancestry in Phoenician script.

        “I was really fascinated by [the common link between the two alphabets], and the concept behind how the same sort of letter could be represented,” she said.

        Meekhof, who grew up in Virginia in what she describes as a classic U.S. American family, said that realizing the common root between the two alphabets inspired her work.

“In the U.S., where I grew up, I think Arabic, just from the way it looks — it looks impossible to understand and people don’t even try, and so by extension the whole culture becomes this enigma, and yet through this research, it actually all comes from the same place, the same root,” she said.

“I really wanted to express that and create something that sort of is enigmatic but then create something that you can sort of go back to and understand, and have this discovery of this foundational similarity.”

        Meekhof developed the idea into a series of sketches, and then, in an art production class in the fall semester of 2013, began to build wooden sculptures with the guidance of John Torreano, a visiting professor of studio art from NYU New York.

        “I do graphic design. It’s [generally] done on the computer, and that’s how people experience it,” said Meekhof. “Whereas with [woodworking], you physically have to be there to really get the full impact of the sculpture.”

Of the project, Torreano said, “To me the strength of the work is in her idea of combining Arabic calligraphic characters with English to create a potential new written language system of her own … then using those images as a way to address minimalist aesthetics.”

        The Christo and Jeanne-Claude Award, presented by the NYUAD Institute in partnership with the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation, was founded in 2013 with the stated aim to “encourage and celebrate the creation of new artwork in the United Arab Emirates.”It is open to all full-time students currently enrolled in higher education institutions of the UAE. Last year Sheikha Maryam bint Sultan Al Nahyan of Zayed University won the award for her mirrored installation, “Mirari.”

Meekhof’s winning proposal for “Abjad” was selected from 27 entries, according to ADMAF’s website, which cited the project’s “originality, multidisciplinary and scope of research” as reasons contributing to its selection. “Abjad” is scheduled to open at the Downtown Campus garden on March 16.