The Biennale reframes Islamic heritage through art, science, and spirituality, celebrating a legacy of beauty, knowledge, and coexistence. Due to
The Biennale reframes Islamic heritage through art, science, and spirituality, celebrating a legacy of beauty, knowledge, and coexistence.
Due to the past few decades, unfortunately, Muslims and their faith have been associated with extremism, violence, and bigotry. The reality is not what is gleaned by the outsiders while focusing on a tiny fraction; it is expansive, and encompasses the luminous history of Muslim society and their contributions in the areas of knowledge, aesthetics, logic, and peaceful coexistence. In many Muslim cultures, people from all sects, beliefs, and practices pursuing a common goal join to find the truth and the path towards perfection.
The 2nd Islamic Arts Biennale, being held from Jan 26 to May 26, at Jeddah is another note, the reminder – an extended essay on this fact. Titled ‘And All That Is In Between’; the biennale with its three Artistic Directors (Dr. Julian Raby, Dr. Abdul Rahman Azzam, Dr. Amin Jaffer), and one Contemporary Art Curator (Muhannad Shono), are installed in the interior galleries, and the open space under the canopy of the Western Hajj Terminal. Showcasing objects from across the continents, which relate to the Islamic set of faith, curiosity, inquiry, exploration, experiments, expression, and aesthetic – hence it “covers every element of Allah’s creation.”
In its thematic concern and curation, the Biennale is divided into four sections: AlBidaya (The Beginning) by Dr. Raby; AlMadar (The Orbit) by Dr. Azzam; AlMuqtani (Homage) by Dr. Jaffer; and AlMidhallah (The Canopy) by Shono – all presenting the investigation, achievement, and diversity of Muslim society, witnessed in its ethnicities, languages, customs, and other cultural manifestations through a period of about 1400 years. Being at the Biennale becomes a sojourn into the mind and soul of a civilization, of multiple dimensions, philosophies and systems.
The first part mainly comprises sacred objects, particularly the set of four huge panels of textile veil of Ka’bah (Kiswah), which, because of its blackness, scale and density, reminds one of the supremacy of the Entity associated with it. The section also includes the silver mount for the Black Stone (Hajar al-Aswad), fixed on almost disappearing (or withdrawing) white display constructions.
Another impressive sight is the collection of Quran manuscripts (mostly on loan from the King Abdulaziz Waqf Libraries Assembly), which reveal the shift in style, scale, paper, and ornamentation across the Muslim world. The Quran, the holy book of God, is significant for another reason, too, since its divine text has tied believers to each other no matter if their mother tongue is Bengali, Swahili, Chinese, Uzbek, or Urdu. For people of Islam, the Book is important, since the first word of revelation was Iqra – to recite. God is hidden, but His Word can be made tangible, hence the tradition of inscribing the Holy Quran, not only an act of worship, but a route to knowledge and a quest to conquer the surroundings. The second zone of the biennale, AlMadar, literally meaning the orbit, examines the role of numbers in Islamic art and culture. Because “Numbers allow us to understand our place in the universe, bring structure to our lives, and map and measure the constellations above us and the lands and seas around us.”
Astrolabes from varying periods and treatises on medicine, geometry, algebra, mathematics, astronomy, and navigation demonstrate how the followers of The Book produced a huge body of research deciphering the law of nature and decoding the truth of the universe, part of their surge to find God. Since knowing His Creation is knowing The Creator. Objects, such as books, equipment, instruments, atlases, charts, textiles, tiles, wood carvings, doors, pottery, testify that each work was not merely an attempt to shape a functional product or a decorative piece, but an intellectual investigation. Seeing the quantity on display (266 pieces in this section) confirms that cultures remained in conversation with themselves and with others, even if the discourse was channelled through multiple tongues, techniques, and passages. It also narrates that the Muslim search for knowledge, and its actual usage, from Al-Andalus to Java, resulted in different formats and directions.
The 3rd zone of the Biennale, AlMuqtani, curated by Dr Amin Jaffer, focuses on how faith meets function in the form of beauty. As the name signifies, it is a tribute to The Al Thani Collection and The Furusiyya Art Foundation, displaying works collected by Sheikh Hammad bin Abdullah Al Thani (a member of Qatari royal family) and Rifaat Medhat Sheik El Ard (a Saudi businessman); Objects range from swords, daggers, war masks, armours, jewellery, metalware, porcelain, containers, carpets, manuscripts, miniature paintings, coins, metallic birds, and articles made of precious stones.
Imaginatively and intelligently exhibited by Dr Jaffer, works of prominent patrons of Islamic art merge in a single space, leading to links of themes, images, techniques, and function. Walking through unobtrusive display units, one realizes that for centuries, human beings believed in their species’ relationship with other creatures and elements of nature. Everything else, like mankind, was alive, thus there had never a contradiction between a piece of Nephrite jade morphing into a ram’s head; or a bronze water jug turning into a peacock; or a wide metal plate becoming a scoop of water from the river, with swirling fish inlaid; further resembling to floral movement on a 16th century Iznik dish. Material testimonies of the past, in which parts of nature co-existed harmoniously and contentedly.
It was only in the modern era that mankind carved a gulf between living and non-living, between human and ‘sub-human’, between zoology and botany and geology (despite knowing that a person survives on consuming nuts, fruits, vegetables and meat; and when dies and buried, the body eventually transforms into fertilizer, or modified as soil and fossils). The fourth part of the Biennale, AlMidhallah (The Canopy) curated by Mohannad Shono addresses the concept and construct of garden – in time and space. In the past and the present, in Islamic societies and other cultures.
Located in the Western Hajj Terminal, a place where Muslim pilgrims from across the world arrive, the display of 20 commissioned works by contemporary artists is organized on the layout of Charbagh (four gardens). Notably, the Arabic term for garden is Riyadh, etymologically connected to mathematics and exercise. A link that reveals that Muslim gardens were not only the semblance of colour, fragrance, and beauty, but the outcome of calculation, measurement, and planning. Here, amongst other participants, Bilal Allaf’s 24-hour-long filmed performance is displayed on a large screen. Footage of him walking in the barren stretch of land is haunting, mainly due to its aimlessness and Kafkaesque atmosphere, but it’s an attempt to revive “the story of Hajar, Abraham’s wife,” who searched for water in the desert.
Desperately searching for water amid the expanse of barren earth could be an attempt to reclaim paradise on this earth. In the Mughal and Central Asian dynasties, gardens were laid out around the pattern of quadrangles. In physical spaces as well as on paper. Imran Qureshi, borrowing patterns and palette from the Mughal miniature painting, has constructed an attractive, inviting, and interactive space made of “woven, vibrant strips to visualize water source inspired by the charbagh”.
Some other artists have also approached natural substances by establishing the harmony between humans and their surroundings. Asim Waqif has assembled a structure of bamboo, palm fronds, reed weaving, composite strap, natural fibre ropes, and electronic and audio equipment to reclaim the lost heaven. A garden of sustainable stuff that invites visitors to enter and strike any segment, thus lending to a sound eventually amplified by an electronic system.
Waqif’s Min Rukam, indicates a dystopian scenario. Not far from Iqra Tanveer & Ehsan ul Haq’s Sleepers of the Cave. A reference to the Chapter Al-Kahf (18.9-26) of the Qur’an, which describes the parable of some men and their dogs, who withdrew inside a cave to sleep (the inspiration for Jorge Luis Borges’ short story The Secret Miracle). Once they woke up and went to the town, they discovered that an undetermined length of time had passed; their coins were no longer in circulation, and they were in a new, unfamiliar, and strange setting.
Tanveer and Haq’s work, consisting of water installations and sculptural pieces, suggests the dismal future waiting on the thresholds of our ignorance. Both artists have pushed the unbelievable to a reality in which waves of the sea are captured inside a glass box within a wall (similar to mineral water sold in plastic bottles); and fossilized forms of strange creatures occupy deserted territories. Walking near these ruinous species/animals, one foresees a situation that could happen to the inhabitants of the planet; if there is no action or plan to maintain the ecosystem, that includes us too.
