Subtlety is a surprising quality to find in a sculpted head similar in size to those on Mount Rushmore, but that is the impression achieved by Boston-based artist Ralph Helmick in a new Abu Dhabi monument to Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the late emir and first president of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Formed of 1,327 football-sized geometric solids suspended on 1,110 cables in a 100-foot-high open-sided triangular prism, the disaggregated portrait “employs a kind of ‘active perception,’ where we as viewers help to create the image,” says the artist. To view it, visitors enter a tranquil eight-acre public garden planted with desert trees and grasses, leaving behind the bustle of the beachfront Corniche Road. Walkways that ring the pavilion provide vantage points from which the abstract assembly resolves into Zayed’s familiar features. For the full effect, however, viewers must wait until dusk, when electric lighting makes the stainless-steel polyhedrons shine like stars, giving the artwork its title, The Constellation.