/ Where Lies My Carpet is Thy Home is a collaborative project developed with carpet merchants from Abu Dhabi’s carpet souk and inspired by personal stories shared during majlis (sitting room) sessions. Memories of the merchants’ homelands—Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India—are woven together with their present lives at the souk and their dreams of return. The project resulted in a permanent public park / plaza in the heart of the city.

Each cascading valley depicted in the carpet tells a story, one valley depicts Wali, an Afghani shop owner who dreams of his apple orchard; another shows where Abdul, a shepherd from the KPK region in northern Pakistan, buys and sells sheep. Other scenes highlight the sacrifices of expatriates and second-generation workers who recall their fathers selling carpets in Abu Dhabi.

The design is playful yet poignant, drawing inspiration from Afghan war carpets, while the grid-like kilim-inspired composition evokes a pixelated, 8-bit aesthetic reminiscent of early video games. The large-scale work reflects a carpet’s lifecycle—from collecting sheep’s wool, to dyeing fibres with natural indigo, to selling it in the souk. This tactile experience is meant to be navigated at human scale, with motifs and objects sized for close viewing. Known for challenging traditional Western art forms, here Benton relates how the migrant experience endures in the UAE. Consistent with his practice, he proposes a decolonial mode of experiencing art—through the body first, then the eye—offering a piece meant to be lived in, loved, and felt.

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With a goal to inspire co-use of the space by folks from different backgrounds, Benton curated public programming for six months, organizing film screenings, dozens of performances, experimental music nights, open-aux DJ sessions, a monthly residency of traditional Afghan music, poetry nights, dinners and several amateur photography contests and photo walks.