Footnotes

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, London
Acquired directly from the Artist by the above

"In the introduction of the exhibition catalogue of a show I had in Washington D.C. that talked about the use of calligraphy in my works, the curator wrote that he could not see Arabic calligraphy in my works but rather a series of 'signs'. That statement gave me more confidence in what I was doing. By trying to produce an art that is accessible to everyone I was not only attempting to bridge the contemporary and the ancient, but also to bridge Western and Eastern art."
– Dia Azzawi

Dia Azzawi is Iraq's foremost living modern artist. The present work is a superlative manifestation of the artist's practice incorporating Arabic letter-forms and numerals. In this painting, the outward beauty and decorative scheme of the composition mask the symbolic significance of the characters depicted.

In the mediaeval era, numeral and textual calligraphy served an important spiritual function in traditional Sufi practice. Numerological characters formed both mystical talismans and secret languages, which Sufi dervishes used as forms of coded communication. A belief in the divinity of number, as expounded by mystic philosophers and scientists such as Al-Farabi and Ghazali, coupled with the notion that mathematics was an artefact of heavenly order, led to the creation of complex numerological charts, treatises, and codes. These were used both as tools of spiritual understanding and as objects of talismanic worship.

Azzawi's homage to the archaic ritual of mystical numerology is conveyed through a distinctly modern artistic agenda. The numeral forms themselves no longer serve their traditional purpose and are instead reduced to visual remnants of a now-redundant practice. With this gesture, Azzawi reminds us that traditions once central to the cultural backbone of Muslim society have become historical fragments: no longer functionally active, but worthy of aesthetic recollection.