Arabic Love

The beginning of a sunday afternoon (rainy) in the British Museum is a happy discovery. The exhibition "Words into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East" sure is of good value, with a perfect timing and good messages. Well done the curator (sorry, have to say - Venetia Porter, a woman)! Above the amazing round reading room (one of the musts of the BM), one navigates through a carefully thought path of discovering Arabic calligraphy, words, meaning, art and modern artists from the Middle East. Fortunately for those not living in London, the exhibition is online through the BM website in partnership with the Birzeit University, Palestine. Have a look. Four parts. First, sacred script, where you can see are first introduced to the Arabic calligraphy. Some of the scripts made me think about the Chinese calligraphy, made with long and single movements producing very human and beautiful traces of ink. If was with confirmatory surprise that I've seen the "Ya Rahim", drawn by a Chinese Muslim artist - after all, the two touch each other. Then, you can see words coming together with meaning, in the second part - literature into art. In here you find the image which I decided to put here, the illustration of a poem written by Ibn al-Arabi, a Sufi master and writter, written as love poems for a young girl (but, apparently, they are in fact allegories to divine love) . In the third part - deconstructing the word, all gets more complex, one sees how words can unfold and become detached from their meaning, turned into abstract art. Very clever, beautiful, revealing, it broadens our perceptions of words and art in a very subtle but terribly meaningful way. Finally, history, identity and politics, seen by the eyes of the artists, on the war in Iraq, Israel and Lebanon, amongst others. Leave you with the translation to English of the text in the image: "I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love’s camels take, that is my religion and my faith." The single word hubb (‘love’) is isolated in blue. Interpret as you like.