In the center of a dimly lit room a rug of intricate design is splayed underneath several patterned poufs. The cavelike disposition of the space channels and stretches the haunting drone of the music being played overhead. On each of the room’s five sides, all of which are made up of moveable walls, a different film is being projected. Both the video works and the accompanying soundscape border on the trancelike and reflect their roots in the traditions of Sufi mysticism.
Each of the works derives its title from a significant facet of Sufi spirituality and of the five in the room, the work that attracts my particular attention is Al-Tarīqah (The Path). This piece is a convergence of multiple sections of film, whose point of centrality is the arid environment of a desert landscape. The wordless footage often oscillates between the fragmented and the continuous, inducing a state that is nothing short of hypnotic. At times, these frame shifts transmit the impression that the film is in a state of breathing. Sporadically appearing in Al-Tarīqah is a blue figure equipped with feathers. At times the mysterious subject is depicted dropping them as if surrendering their fate to the wind. At others she inserts them into the sand below, only to later remove them again. The feathers’ plurality as an object renders them a point of connection — albeit an ambiguous one — between subject and land. In a way their ambivalence in directionality and meaning mirrors the ever-evolving relations and dialogues that we share with our landscapes. Turning my attention to the other sides of the pentagonal space it becomes clear that many of these same ideas are reiterated and transformed in the remaining four works.
