artnlight

Isabella from Germany is a regular reader and a blogger friend. So as usual I hopped across her to her interesting blog Anarkali & was struck by these pictures & how could I not share this! Calligraphy and that too Islamic - I had to find out more. These photographs are part of a solo exhibition at the DeCordova Musuem [close to Boston] by Lalla Essaydi, a New York-based, Moroccan-born photographer, painter, and installation artist. Over the past decade, she has risen to international prominence with her timely and beautiful work that deals with the condition of women in Islamic society, cross-cultural identity, Orientalism, and the history of art.

Almost all the photographs in Les Femmes du Maroc are based on specific nineteenth-century European and American Orientalist paintings. Essaydi has, however, radically transformed the antecedents. While she retains the compositions, gestures, and general costume of the original paintings, she strips them of their opulent colors, removes male figures (or transforms them into women), erases any cues to social status, clothes all nudity, and simplifies the settings by eliminating props and attributes while introducing all-over draperies, and of course her ubiquitous calligraphy.

"In Islamic cultures, until very recently, calligraphy was an art form practiced exclusively by men for the transcription of sacred texts from the Qur’an, the Hadith, and other sacred writings. Henna is traditionally a women’s art—domestic, decorative, ritual, and erotic. And Essaydi’s text is her own, taken from her journals."

Les Femmes du Maroc also involves a changed approach to text. In earlier photographs, Essaydi’s calligraphy was legible, and communicated her own ideas about cultural identity, memory, communication, and artistic and intellectual freedom. In the recent work, the text is obscured by its presentation—loosely applied, obscured by shifts in scale and the overlapping of figures and draperies, at pitched angles, with words applied atop words like a palimpsest. Even readers of Arabic cannot fully make out its meanings, which are deeply personal and intentionally kept that way.

There is also a book called Les Femmes du Maroc by Fatima Mernissi & Lalla Essaydi. You can buy it here.
You can read the entire pdf of the exhibition & the artist here. Or an an article here.

I 1st saw Reza Abedini's work in an issue of Gallerie and I have found it tough to forget the imagery since. Its great graphic design, typography & arabic calligraphy all rolled into each piece if art. Irresistible. Unforgettable. Genius.

"Calligraphy has been an important branch of art among Islamic cultures. The Quran has said that the eternally protected word must be respected, as it expresses the destiny of all creatures from the beginning of time to the very end. To Iranians, calligraphy is a manifestation of human spirituality, as 'pure writing' was considered to originate from a pure heart."

'Reza Abedini's works are image oriented and in several of them, the words are not meant to be read and are used more as textural imagery. Since the words are derived from speech, he hopes viewers hear whispers of the words in his images. As the British scholar and teacher of penmanship once said, "In calligraphy, all rules must give way to truth and freedom."'

I've long been a fan of Arabic Calligraphy & it is my dear wish to own a piece of it in any form one day. Typography and its use in all aspects of living, be it decor or furnishing or wall surfaces is hugely fascinating to me. And Islam is of a similar opinion ;) which is probably they have calligraphy everywhere. On a more serious note, "Writing is given pride of place on all kinds of objects--objects of everyday use as well as entire wall surface, mosque furniture, the interiors and exteriors of mosques, tombs, and al-Ka'ba, the most famous sanctuary of Islam."

This is poetry, I have no clue what it says, but look at the sweeping and lyrical strokes.

Calligraphy is an integral part of Moghul & Islamic architecture

Please click on the visual to see more of the detailing

There are 5 classical cursive scripts- Deewani, Kufi, Farsi, Req'aa, Naskh & Thuluth.Poetry on stone.
And talking about poetry, its rare to find people who write Urdu poetry in urban gen next India. My friend Gunjan Pai is one such rarity :) Those interested can read her soulful verse on her blog 'Shukraana'