As the holiest site in Islam, the Kaaba is sacred to the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims, who must make the Hajj  pilgrimage to Mecca, where it is sited, once in their lives, and pray in its direction five times every day.

“We live for the Hajj since we are kids. We know about it, why and how and why it is important,” says Mahmoud Obaidi. “And when people go there, they always come back talking about the spiritual feeling that the Kaaba generates.”

The Iraqi-Canadian conceptual artist has created a collection that attempts to understand and channel some of that spirituality. Comprising airy stainless steel and glass cubes, the 52-year-old political artist reflects on the elemental qualities of this sacred structure and the enormity of the spiritual weight assigned to it by a fourth of the planet.

He says the Kaaba evokes many questions.

“Does the simplicity of the shape, with its six closed sets of geometric forms play a role in increasing the psychological element of spirituality in the space around it? If the architecture of the building was a sphere, or a hexagon would it preserve the same level of authority?”

The Kaaba has, of course, inspired a range of artists over the years, from painters and photographers to weavers – and not without controversy. In 2005, a Venice Biennale invitation to the German artist Gregor Schneider was rescinded shortly before he could display Cube, a black sculpture inspired by the form and appearance of Islam's holiest site.

More recently, the Saudi artist Abdelnasser Ghareem, who has exhibited in Sharjah and Berlin, recreated an arch leading to the Kaaba and installed within it a metal detector. By turning the holy site into a sort of security zone, he made a wry comment on the inevitable regularity with which Muslims are pulled aside at airports for extra scrutiny.

In 2012, fellow Saudi artist Ahmed Mater created ‘Magnetism’, an installation with tiny iron filings around a pair of cuboid magnets (with only the larger one visible) – evoking both the unified body of pilgrims that attend the Hajj, and the fact that each member of the Ummah, regardless of age or wealth, is the same in God's eyes.

For his part, Obaidi goes within instead, examining the structure’s architectural dimensions, its interrelationship with the space around it and its impact on worshippers.

“I’m an architect, so the shape was important to me,” he explains. “I know there are a lot of artists who do art inspired by the Kaaba, but I think I’m the first to be inspired by the shape. I wanted to go beyond the religion, to how the shape affects you spiritually.”

To some, Obaidi’s Kaaba project is a natural progression for an artist whose work speaks so much of displacement, belonging and home. The Toronto-based artist’s work can be found in the collections of the British Museum in London, the National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman, and the Sharjah Art Museum and Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah.

Looking ahead, besides working on a museum project with Dia Azzawi, he will also be returning to the political statements that has made his work so collectible. Obaidi - believes art is important because it presents an alternative view of events - says he expects to spend the next couple of years working on what he describes as a difficult undertaking.

“We are documenting things in our own way,” he told Canadian Art magazine last year. “Then, in a hundred years or a thousand years, people will be able to see through this paradox: ‘Oh, the news says this. But the artists say that.’”