Sam'a Dance [It is He Who brings out the living from the dead, and brings out the dead from the living]
It is He Who brings out the living from the dead, and brings out the dead from the living.
(from the Sama’a Dance series)
Lasercut plexiglas, 30x14 cm
v [More about It is He Who brings out the living from the dead, and brings out the dead from the living]
“He brings the living out of the dead and brings the dead out of the living and brings to life the earth after its lifelessness. And thus will you be brought out” ar-rūm (19)
Prophet Mohammed pbuh said “read the Quran and beseech it’s wonders”, reading it is key to understand it. It was brought to people as a linguistic miracle and therefor only through linguistic we can unlock the deep, hidden meanings in it.
The artist was a Quran Hafiz in her childhood and because of that her passion to understand more about it grew along with her as she was constantly told to read it by heart to understand it purely and then say it out loud.
Quran could be interpreted by its utterances deviating from its initial concepts into other meanings that go alongside and commit to the laws of observation and frontiers of thought, and exalt the Lord and deem him above fault and error.
From this principle the artist read the verse “he brings the living out of the dead and brings the dead out of the living” from a rather personal perspective, one of the most simple yet complicated human experience which is love, the inspiration for most ancient and modern poets.
The installation forms of different poems put in the order of love, loss, love, loss as an interpretation of bringing life out of death and death out of life. What’s interesting is that in the referenced verse there is no act of death mentioned, they were all acts of bringing life to or out of something.
The poems:
لأخرجن من الدنيا وحبكم بين الجوانح لم يشعر به أحد - الخُبز أَرزي
حرام علي النوم يا ابنة مالك ومن فرشه جمر الغضا كيف يرقد - عنتره بن شداد
أحبك حباً لو يفض يسيره على الخلق مات الخلق من شدة الحب - محمد بن أبي أميه
سأندب حتى يعلم الطير أنني حزين ويرثى لي الحمام المغرد - عنتره بن شداد
Prophet Mohammed pbuh said “read the Quran and beseech it’s wonders”, reading it is key to understand it. It was brought to people as a linguistic miracle and therefor only through linguistic we can unlock the deep, hidden meanings in it.
The artist was a Quran Hafiz in her childhood and because of that her passion to understand more about it grew along with her as she was constantly told to read it by heart to understand it purely and then say it out loud.
Quran could be interpreted by its utterances deviating from its initial concepts into other meanings that go alongside and commit to the laws of observation and frontiers of thought, and exalt the Lord and deem him above fault and error.
From this principle the artist read the verse “he brings the living out of the dead and brings the dead out of the living” from a rather personal perspective, one of the most simple yet complicated human experience which is love, the inspiration for most ancient and modern poets.
The installation forms of different poems put in the order of love, loss, love, loss as an interpretation of bringing life out of death and death out of life. What’s interesting is that in the referenced verse there is no act of death mentioned, they were all acts of bringing life to or out of something.
The poems:
لأخرجن من الدنيا وحبكم بين الجوانح لم يشعر به أحد - الخُبز أَرزي
حرام علي النوم يا ابنة مالك ومن فرشه جمر الغضا كيف يرقد - عنتره بن شداد
أحبك حباً لو يفض يسيره على الخلق مات الخلق من شدة الحب - محمد بن أبي أميه
سأندب حتى يعلم الطير أنني حزين ويرثى لي الحمام المغرد - عنتره بن شداد
v [More about Sam'a Dance series]
No discussion about Islamic art and spirituality can be completed without taking into account the importance of music. The qaw- walis (or Sama‘) dance, which is a vocal musical performance of sufi poetry with instrumental accompaniment, generates ontoge- netic plenitude and a blissful, ineffable and inscrutable state of spiritual enlightenment. The spiritual states evoked by classical music are closely related to the spiritual states (ahwal) of the Sufis, and through Sufi-tradition to the spirit of the Holy Scripture (The Quran).
The dance’s repetitive nature is both transcendent and spiritual, thereby losing its material essence. This dance is critical in the artist’s understanding of Islamic sacred arts (Geometric Motifs, calligraphy, and Arabesque) and their representation of our con- ditions as humans (Repetition, Balance, Symmetry, Compatibility). This series explores the paradoxes that exist in our being: love and hate, mortal and immortal. It tries to find a place where they coexist not contradict, through the exploration of different methods of visualsing text and literature.
The dance’s repetitive nature is both transcendent and spiritual, thereby losing its material essence. This dance is critical in the artist’s understanding of Islamic sacred arts (Geometric Motifs, calligraphy, and Arabesque) and their representation of our con- ditions as humans (Repetition, Balance, Symmetry, Compatibility). This series explores the paradoxes that exist in our being: love and hate, mortal and immortal. It tries to find a place where they coexist not contradict, through the exploration of different methods of visualsing text and literature.