Project Details
BOOK

Kum Sukhan

TECHNIQUE

Photomontages

PULISHER

Markings

YEAR

2012

The sound of silence …. esoteric, intimidating, and perfect. Silence is best broken with the vibration of words that are not empty vessels of sound, but meaningful thought provoking and heartfelt. Here is a collection of a few words out of the many amassed over the years; mostly during the sublime encounters with my spiritual teacher. The power of the word lies not in understanding its meaning, but in the resonance of its inspiration deep within, as one waits with patience and longing. As calligraphy, the word becomes the object and the aesthetic. Photographed, it is the subject. In the studio, it is lit and projected onto layers of diaphanous material. The silence of the photograph cries out, but you are quiet, and so am I

All the photo montages in this image galley are diptychs in which the first image shows the word clearly and in the second image diffused, lost as it becomes muted in clarity and colours. Hence symbolically putting the idea forward. How over time beautiful meaningful words have lost their strength and don’t seem to matter anymore.

 

All that is left 
to us by tradition 
is mere words.

It is up to us 
to find out what they mean.

 

Hazrat ibn al-`Arabi r.a`, Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, in The Mystics of Islam, translated by Reynold A Nicholson

 

 

Look for the moon in the sky, not in the water!

If you desire to rise above mere names and letters,

Make yourself free from self at one stroke.

Become pure from all attributes of self,

That you may see your own bright essence,

Yea, see in your own heart the knowledge of the Prophet,

Without book, without tutor, without preceptor.”

 

Hazrat ibn al-`Arabi r.a`, Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, in The Mystics of Islam, translated by Reynold A Nicholson

 

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