Tarek Al-Ghoussein’s “K Files,” 2013, the result of an invitation to participate in Kuwait’s first national pavilion at the Fifty-Fifth Venice Biennale, is a series of photographs of key sites of nation building, from the iconic Kuwait Towers to its famous stock market—some now abandoned and in disrepair. His recent exhibition “Al Sawaber,” curated by art historian Salwa Mikdadi, was an in-depth photographic portrait of just one such site, the eponymous deserted government-housing complex in the heart of Kuwait City.

Organized around a series of green corridors, the complex’s distinctive