Karim+Elias
ARTISTS
KARIM+ELIAS is a UAE-based multidisciplinary design studio working at the intersection of art, architecture, and interior design. Founded by Karim Tamerji and Elias El Hage, the studio explores the material and metaphor of sand, translating its symbolic essence into sculptural furniture, immersive environments, and site-specific installations.
With backgrounds spanning fine art, spatial design, product development, and digital media, KARIM+ELIAS reimagines desert landscapes through crafted objects and spaces that feel both ancient and contemporary. Their work is rooted in material storytelling, regional identity, and a deep connection to place.
Each project emerges as an earthen relic — a physical expression of memory, geography, and meaning. With a global vision and a practice grounded in the Middle Eastern landscape, KARIM+ELIAS continues to craft artefacts and experiences that connect people to the environments they inhabit.
Location
Dubai and Beirut
Email
hello@karimelias.com
Website
karimelias.com
Designeers Says
KARIM+ELIAS shapes stories from the ground beneath us. At Designeers, we admire their poetic commitment to place — transforming the timelessness of sand into sculptural forms and immersive spatial experiences that echo far beyond their material origins. Their work blurs the line between relic and design, memory and matter, grounding contemporary creativity in the soul of the desert.
Elemental Sculptural Immersive
Discover more by Karim+Elias
Based in the UAE, KARIM+ELIAS is a multidisciplinary design studio drawing on deep expertise in fine arts, interior and product design, architecture, site-specific installations, digital media, and mural work. Inspired by the region’s desert landscapes and the symbolic nature of sand, their practice explores the intersection of material storytelling and spatial emotion.
Following their debut at Downtown Design Dubai in 2022, the studio has focused on crafting sculptural furniture and immersive environments that reinterpret place and material. Each piece is envisioned as a contemporary relic — an artefact of natural history, cultural memory, and elemental form.
journal
From Earth to Object: KARIM+ELIAS on Sculpting Sand into Contemporary Relics
Rooted in the landscapes of the UAE and bonded by a shared foundation in architecture, KARIM+ELIAS transforms the elemental material of sand into sculptural works of art, design, and memory. In this Journal conversation with Designeers, founders Karim Tamerji and Elias El Hage reflect on their collaborative journey, the cultural and ecological resonance of rammed earth, and their mission to revive ancient craft through a contemporary lens.
From public installations to collectible furniture, their work offers a tactile and timeless response to place — redefining sand not as something to be walked over, but as something to be remembered.
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