The Al-Aqsa Car - Majed Namous

The idea

01

Some places are not served by a picture on a wall, because what they hold in memory is wider than any frame. Al-Aqsa is one of them.

That is where the idea came from: to move its image out of a fixed place and into something that travels among people and meets them in an ordinary day. I chose a car precisely because a car is among the things that pass in front of us without being noticed, so if it carries the image of Al-Aqsa, the passing itself becomes a reminder.

I did not want a work to be seen once and be done with. I wanted a presence that returns on the road, and stays in memory.

From an idea to a beginning

02

The work began with a small model I built first, so I could see the idea in front of me: where the dome would sit, how the walls and courtyards would be arranged across the length of one car, and where the driver would sit among all of it.

The real beginning was an ordinary car, stripped back to its bare chassis - the ground everything else would be built on.

A small white model showing the mosque and walls laid out in the shape of a car — The first model: the dome, the walls and the courtyards set out across the car.

The white model seen from above, its courtyards and the driver position visible

A car stripped of its body, standing in a workshop yard — Point zero - the car stripped back to its chassis.

When the idea began to take shape

03

Majed Namous working on small-scale stone arches — The arches carved and set one piece at a time.

From the bare chassis the body was built again: sheets cut, welded and shaped, until the mass that would carry the mosque stood straight.

Then came the finer part - the arches and the stonework, carved and set one piece at a time. The hardest thing was keeping the architectural detail exact while it was being built on the body of a car rather than on solid ground.

I oversaw the project and carried out most of its detail myself, calling on a few craftsmen for the work that needed specialised skill.

A welded metal body over a car chassis inside a workshop — The metal body built onto the chassis, before the stonework.

The idea became real

04

The finished car in an open yard, Majed Namous at the wheel

The car was finished carrying the Dome of the Rock, the Qibli mosque, the walls and the courtyards - their stone, their ornament, their trees and their gateways.

The point was never to change the shape of a car. It was to find a way for the image of Al-Aqsa to move among people and draw attention to itself, with no sign and no explanation.

At night, when the detail is lit, the work reads more closely still: the mosaic on the dome, the inscriptions along its walls, the trees standing in the courtyards.

The Dome of the Rock on the model at night, its mosaic and inscriptions visible

The model courtyards at night, arcades, minaret and trees

The finished car indoors, the dome and the walls visible along it

The model lit at night, dome, walls and trees in view — The detail at night, when light shows what daylight does not.

When the idea met people

05

When the car went out onto the road, people stopped at it. They came close to look at the detail and to take photographs, and the children were the most curious of them, nearest to the glass.

That is where the idea felt complete, because its meaning was never in the car itself, but in what happens when it meets people.

The model displayed on the street behind a glass front

Children gathered in front of the model displayed behind glass

What we want kept in memory has first to be kept in front of the eye.

My conversation on Al Jazeera about the idea Get in touch