The astronaut

With its back to the Warehouse Gym’s pastel mural, an astronaut about two and a half metres tall stands on the Yas Bay Waterfront and waves at everyone who walks by. The suit is white, trimmed in light blue at the cuffs, the knees and the soles of its high-top sneakers, with round blue buttons on the chest, a pack in front and another on the back, and dark grey gloves. The helmet is where it stops being serious: two cat ears on top, and in place of a glass visor a faceted mask of small triangles in every colour, like a disco ball pressed flat.

It stands on a short brick walk between clipped hedges and small round trees, on two steel plates, with a little dark plaque on a post beside it. I could not read the plaque or find the name of the work or who made it, so on the map it is simply the astronaut. After dark a lamp set in the paving lights it softly from below.

How to see it: Zoom right in on the walk along the Warehouse Gym’s mural.