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All work commencing 03.03.2021 will now be found on my Powerpoint, shared with Katy Magor and Joanna Fursman.

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I wanted to create both a study and ficitional adaptation of the Hall of Memory. I did this to show my influences and direction I'm going in the project, which I've decided is to transform my primary sourced pictures of Western architecture into Islamic architecture and other types (for unity), and 'oriental-like' scenes with human figures.
Firstly, I drew the building from my primary source as usual, being in the center to be the center of focus. I used the picture to also map out where I wanted to place the people. I took inspiration from the Islamic attire of a Jilbab (a type of long sleeved maxi dress that includes a hijab). I did this to show the Islamic influence and linking to the message of unity I wanted to portray in my work between the Western world and Islamic lands. I took inspiration from A.Q Arif's work by allowing the distant, fictional buildings to fade into the background and almost become just shapes. I also took inspiration from Jordan Grimmer by adding human figures into the drawing, but keeping them quite small and only a couple figures to make sure that there's more focus on the buildings than the figures.
I wanted this piece to be the start of figuring out my path, so I wanted it to reflect the message of unity and serenity. By adding muslim figures, a church in the background, making the main building into a mosque, and adding crumbling ruins I mushed my different interests, such as cappricio, into one. The artwork reflects a man walking through the ruins and a woman to another location in peace in an empty but still full area.
I enjoyed the thinking process it took to figure out what works and what I wanted the piece to reflect. It also has become the starting point of my final piece. To improve further, I would like to work in a more chiaroscuro manner for more intensity and emotion, and try the same type of concept in oil painting and digitally to figure out what medium(s) work best.

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Sketch - Hall of Memory, Centenary Square, Birmingham

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Sketch - Hall of Memory, Centenary Square, Birmingham

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I wanted to create both a study and fictional adaptation of the Hall of Memory. I did this to show my influences and direction within the project. I wanted to create a feeling of tranquillity within the drawing and like it is a dream. To do this, I added plain and faded buildings in the background (an archway, fortress and church) that loom over the foreground.

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Other parts of my project (Katy's lessons) can be found here. Please refer to the dates on the ppt and this padlet for guidance.

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Contains secondary inspiration and contextual sources

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Collection by Nadia uddin * Last updated 2 minutes ago

contextual influences

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Leonardo Coccorante: Capriccio architettonico con figure, crepuscolo - Prima metà del sec. XVIII - Collezione privata

Corporate Art Task Force - Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Hassan

hüseyin zekai paşa eserleri hüseyin zekai paşa nın eserleri resimleri halil Hüseyin Zekai Paşa [IMG] (1860- 1919) Güzel sanatlara ait...

Ayasofya Camii Hünkâr Mahfili Hüseyin Zekai Paşa (🇹🇷 1860-1919)

RUDOLF ERNSTAustrian1854-1932 THE NARGILAH SMOKERsigned R. Ernst. lower rightoil on panel41 by 25cm., 16½ by 10in.﻿Please note: Condition 11 of the Condition

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Leonardo Coccorante: Capriccio architettonico con figure, crepuscolo - Prima metà del sec. XVIII - Collezione privata

ARC / Leonardo Coccorante

LEONARDO COCCORANTE "il giordano di prospettiva" naples 1680 - 1750 pair of architectural capricci with figures before a sarcophagus and figures in a ruined arcade Both at 74 x 56 cm., oil on

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280 Architecture - scales ideas in 2021 | architecture, byzantine architecture, mosque art

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Collection by Nadia uddin * Last updated 2 minutes ago contextual influences The AOI provides contract and business support to illustrators. We champion the rights of illustrators, and run competitions and events. @ab_varaham: "Abbas and the Euphrates" Leonardo Coccorante: Capriccio architettonico con figure, crepuscolo - Prima metà del sec.

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I found that this task was a mix of likes and dislikes throughout the process.

I enjoyed the therapeutic nature of folding, analysing, repeating, and seeing how the shadows cast upon different folds at the end. I used some blue eyeshadow on the ridges to help define them a little more.

However, I didn't enjoy the amount of times I had to redo this sculpture because the paper kept ripping at the ridges. Possibly this could have been solved with thinner paper as their would be less paper for the ridges to go through.

In conclusion, I liked this exercise, however I don't think it's something I would enjoy continuing and exploring in this project. I much prefer 2D painting, but possibly doing sculptures in a stronger structure such as clay could be explored.

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I first went on to my teacher's Pinterest for some inspiration, and found this:
Pinterest inspiration
I was then inspired by traditional Islamic geometric patterns which are found on Islamic architecture.
I wanted to recreate these patterns with paper by folding only.

I first cut down the paper to a square size in order to achieve the geometric folds. I then followed this video in order to achieve the finished sculpture.

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Although these haven't been printed yet due to lockdown, I'm excited to see how these different materials will affect the print outcome. Perhaps these could be further explored with block-printing by carving out a design on rubber, plastic or wood, depending on if I have time and the equipment to do so.
I enjoyed putting everything together and seeing the final outcome. I think the only thing I disliked was how messy it became with the little space I had. But, it was a wonderful feeling to let the crafty and child side out for a bit, messing around with materials like building blocks.

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This installation gave me the same types of emotions as Qureshi's work, with the pure whites and elegant sculpting. The delicacy between limbs, foliage, flowers and cracked stone altars made the pieces look as though they came from Greek statues and sculptures of the Ancient times. The limbs became one with the cracked floors; it became architecture itself.

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Inspired by the east: how the Islamic world influenced western art examines how European and North American visual arts have been inspired by the Islamic world for centuries. Known as 'Orientalism', this representation of the East in Western art often blurred the line between fantasy and reality. Ranging from painting and decorative arts, interior design to architecture, the objects and artworks depict or refer to subjects and styles from the Islamic World, primarily the Middle East and North Africa.

The Orientalist art movement reached its height during the 19th century and is perhaps best known for its production of impressive oil paintings and works on paper. This movement, however, in fact stems from as early as the 15th century and continues to be referenced in art today. It has influenced the production of a wide range of works of art including ceramics, metalwork, photography, to name a few, but also extends more widely to include theatre, architecture and music.

The Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said's influential text Orientalism brought critical attention to the subject in 1978, questioning the ways in which the West has envisaged and misrepresented the East in culture. In it he criticised the often over-romanticised and inaccurate representations the West has presented of the East, or the 'Orient', particularly through literature and extending into politics. He defined the Orient as being 'the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other'. To tackle such an enormous subject goes well beyond the scope of this exhibition, which focuses on the art movement of Orientalism. Here, we engage with such critiques, by recognising issues of misrepresentation whilst also identifying a long and rich history of influence and exchange in both directions. A human propensity to know and understand people and places.

School of Veronese (1528-1588), A Portrait of Sultan Bayezid I. Oil on canvas, c. 1580.
© Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia.

Indeed, for centuries Europe defined itself in relation to its Middle Eastern neighbours. From around 1500, as Europeans became both increasingly curious and aggressive in their dealings with those outside their borders, there was a sustained awareness of the empires of the Middle East. These Eastern neighbours were the Safavid Empire (1501-1722), centred around modern Iran, and the Ottoman Empire (about 1300-1924), which comprised modern-day Turkey, most of south-eastern Europe and the Arabic-speaking lands. Likewise, European traders and diplomats were considered an exotic 'other' by people in the Middle East. At a time when relations between Europe and the Middle East were more evenly balanced than in later periods, this was a period marked by exchange and fluidity.

This can be seen in the imitation of certain styles, for example, in this Iznik plate from the 17th century. It was known as a centre for high-quality pottery production for centuries. The distinctive floral designs were also popular on tiles that decorated the inside of buildings during the Ottoman period (c.14th - 20th century).

Glazed and gilded pottery dish, Iznik, Turkey. Ottoman dynasty, 1601-1625.

The second image shows tiles made by English designer William De Morgan in the 19th century. He was influenced by Middle Eastern ceramics and designs, creating floral motifs that appeared in fashionable ceramics, stained glass and furnishings.

Four earthenware tiles, decorated by William De Morgan (1839-1917) at Sands End Pottery, Fulham, 1888-1897.

As Europeans increasingly looked outward to the Americas, Africa and Asia from the 1500s, they developed new ways of visualising, identifying and disseminating information about the people they encountered. Costume books became a popular way of 'classifying' different groups according to their dress, from sultans and mystics to dancers. However, these portrayals could often be based on stereotypes and helped perpetuate them in Europe.

The presence of Europeans in Middle Eastern cities also provided local artists with the chance to indulge their own taste for the 'exotic' in portraits of European dandies and courtiers.

Levni (active c. 1703-1730), leading artist at the court of Sultan Ahmet III, A European gentleman in a red coat. Ottoman School painting, Turkey, early 1700s.

Arguably the best-known artistic output of the Orientalist art movement was a huge body of paintings by European and North American artists. Many of these artists travelled to the places they depicted, whether Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), Jerusalem, Cairo or Marrakesh. Others travelled no further than Paris or Vienna, but used a mixture of photographs, props and imagination for inspiration. Recurring images included everything from detailed sketches of daily life to imagined scenes of the harem. Interest in Orientalism developed in tandem with European colonial interests in the Middle East, which allowed soldiers, traders and artists greater access to the places and peoples of the region.

Frederick Arthur Bridgman (1847-1928), The Prayer. Oil on canvas, 1877.
© Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia.

In the exhibition we examine the idea of Orientalism, offering another look at this cultural relationship, revealing that Orientalism encompasses many types of visual and decorative arts - not just painting, as is often assumed. Orientalist objects with origins in Europe, North America, the Middle East and North Africa as diverse as ceramics, photography, glass, jewellery and clothing, and contemporary art highlight a centuries-old tradition of influence and exchange from East to West and West to East, whether gained through diplomatic encounters, spoils of war, or simply through travel. They range from objects that were created by early Western pilgrims visiting the Holy Land to ceramics that were made by 19th-century Western artists directly copying earlier versions from Turkey or Iran.

Although Orientalism remains a highly charged and contested term, with Orientalist arts and crafts rapidly declining in popularity from the 1940s, its visual language remains a potent resource for artists today. The exhibition concludes with four contemporary reactions to the imagery of Orientalism by Middle Eastern and North African female artists. These works - including Inci Eviner's 2009 video work Harem and Lalla Essaydi's Women of Morocco triptych - answer Orientalist representations of the East, subverting and undermining works by earlier European and North American artists.

Lalla Essaydi (b. 1956), Les Femmes du Maroc. Triptych of photographic prints, 2005.

This triptych is from a series of photographs in which Essaydi reimagines the harem paintings of 19th-century Orientalism. Here, women are active agents rather than passive objects subjected to the voyeuristic imaginings of European artists, such as Delacroix, whose Femmes d'Alger is referenced by the series title. Essayadi replaces the bright colours, nudity and luxury of Orientalist paintings with monochrome settings, fully clothed women and strings of Arabic letters, taking back ownership of their representation.
Inspired by the east: how the Islamic world influenced western art is open from 10 October 2019 - 26 January 2020. Find out more and book tickets. Supported by Jack Ryan Sponsored by Standard Chartered Bank
Organised with the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia

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How did the Islamic world influence Western art?

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Inspired by the east: how the Islamic world influenced western art examines how European and North American visual arts have been inspired by the Islamic world for centuries. Known as 'Orientalism', this representation of the East in Western art often blurred the line between fantasy and reality.

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It was interesting to see how the human body became a moving sculpture in Sahota's work. The bright, neon lights moving with the bodies of decorated, traditional Indian clothing, in a dark atmosphere of the abyss. The arts of Indian dance become more mystical and magical, but not romanticised.

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This mark-making task was a mixed bag of emotions. I enjoyed a few areas, such as sgraffito with the oil pastels and subtractive mark making with the charcoal, but I didn't feel like I particularly learnt how I could use these within the future within the project. Perhaps, if I experimented with paint and brush strokes, I would have learnt more because I wish to use paint as my primary medium in the project. In conclusion, I believe this task wasn't as successful, but has given me the idea to further explore in paint, which could be more successful.

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A bleak landscape stretches out in all directions, broken only by wind-hewed formations of sandstone. A lone traveller wanders this hostile, waterless place, looking for shelter. And then on the horizon, a line of ruined walls appears to him like an apparition. In the heat haze, they seem to hover above the ground. As he gets closer, memories of this place come back to him. Broken tents and pegs, abandoned fire pits, the signs of a camp long-since abandoned: this is the place where he once met the love of his life, now lost forever. As he wanders the ruins, he sees deer and goats grazing where he once walked with his beloved. He sees the plants of the desert bursting up through the tent where they once lay together. As the memories of this place rush back to him, the horizon flashes with thunder and the rain finally comes to the land.

This scene is a famous one. For centuries, it appeared and reappeared throughout Arabic poetry, and became one of the primary poetic tropes of the Pre-Islamic period and the early days of Islam. It is known as wuquf 'ala al-atlal, or 'stopping by the ruins', and today, it has found new life in the work of a generation of artists reacting to the loss of war and state violence across the Middle East.
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The motif of the atlal ('ruins') originates in the pre-Islamic period, among the so-called Jahili ('agnostic' or Pre-Islamic) poets. It's thought that its originator was the 6th Century poet-king Imru' al-Qais. Al-Qais was the last king of the kingdom of Kindah, and is often hailed as the father of Arabic poetry. He spent much of his life banished from his kingdom, ostensibly due to his excessive love of poetry, and during his exile he wandered the lands of Arabia and wrote poetry. Legend has it that one of his poems was later written in gold and included in the Mu'allaqat (the Hanging Poems), seven pieces of poetry supposedly suspended from the Kaaba at Mecca, Islam's holiest shrine.

In his contribution to the Mu'allaqat, al-Qais describes a character stopping for a time at the ruins of a campsite and remembering his beloved in the ruins. He opens by describing the desolate place, broken and overgrown by nature:

The traces of her encampment are not wholly obliterated even now.
...
The courtyards and enclosures of the old home have become desolate;
The dung of the wild deer lies there thick as the seeds of pepper.
( The Mu'allaqah of Imru al-Qais)

The word wuquf that gives the trope its name holds the double meaning of 'standing' and 'stopping', so this portion of the poem usually forms a moment of stillness and meditation, outside of time. The landscape comes to represent loss and longing, a container for memory. After reminiscing about his beloved, al-Qais's character is brought back to the present by a flash of lightning:
But come, my friends, as we stand here mourning, do you see the lightning?
See its glittering, like the flash of two moving hands, amid the thick gathering clouds.
Another great master of poetry was Tarafa, a near-contemporary of al-Qais whose poem was also included in the collection of the Mu'allaqat. Imitating al-Qais, Tarafa's poem opens with ruins appearing on the horizon like an apparition:

The ruins Khawla left
on the mottled flatlands of Thimhad
appear and fade, like the trace of a tattoo
on the back of a hand.
( The Mu'allaqah of Tarafa)

The 'appearance' of the ruins carries the same sense as an apparition: dreamlike and strange, lingering on the horizon.

Once he reaches the ruins of the campsite, the poet remembers a lost love. He sees her traces everywhere in the debris, even in the dust of the earth:
When I snap the rough-fringed whip
You see two heaps of earth
with silent slabs
Excavating a poetic tradition of hard, deaf stone
piled up upon them.
I see death choose
the generous and the noble,
while picking over the best part
of the hardened miser's spoil. she bursts forward,
vapours smouldering
over the kindled rock terrain.
The ruins remind Tarafa of the cruelty of fate and the indiscriminate passing of time. They speak of life's injustice and the inevitability of loss:

The sentimentality toward ruins shown by Tarafa, al-Qais and other pre-Islamic poets meant that by the Islamic Golden Age of the Abbasid period, the trope began to attract mockery. The poet Abu Nuwas (762 - 813 CE), famous for his thirst for wine and his love affairs with men and women, and who was dubbed the "bad boy of Abbasid poetry", openly mocked the motif of the atlal in one of his poems:

The wretch paused to examine an abandoned campsite,
While I paused to inquire about the neighbourhood tavern.
May God never dry the tears of those who cry over stones,
Nor ease the love-pangs of those who cry over tent pegs.
(Abu Nuwas, The Wretch Paused)

Despite this mockery, the atlal trope endured through the ages, and today in the Middle East, a new generation of artists is returning to this ancient trope and using it to make sense of the loss and destruction experienced in countries with recent experience of war: most prominently in Iraq and Palestine.

The seminal Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish is one of the most significant inheritors of the atlal tradition. His poem " Standing Before the Ruins of Al-Birweh " is one example: it relates his return to the ruined village of al-Birweh, where he was born. In 1948, when Darwish was 7, Israeli forces occupied the village and depopulated it of its Palestinian inhabitants, leaving only ruins.

The lines of Darwish's poem mimic the Mu'allaqat of Tarafa and al-Qais, and even mention those ancient Jahili poets:
Stop so that I may weigh the place
and its emptiness with Jahili odes
full of horses and departure
For every rhyme we will pitch a tent
For every home to be stormed by the wind,
there is a rhyme.
In the ruins, Darwish's memories of his childhood resurface, just as the ancient poets saw memories of their lost loves. The ancient trope here becomes a way of mediating the loss of a home, and the injustice of war.

Iraqi novelist Sinan Antoon, who translated his Al-Birweh poem, has spoken at length about Darwish's use of the ruins motif in his poetry. Darwish, Antoon says, is "a rememberer of a past that never had a chance to live, but lives on as a trace. That is, the trace in the atlal of classical Arabic poetry."

"The ruins, or atlal," Antoon argues, "stand for a previous presence... and are reminders of an ongoing obliteration and exile."
Contemporary ruins
In Antoon's own novels, the atlal trope resurfaces again and again as a way of discussing the violence inflicted upon Iraq, and his home city of Baghdad. To take just one example, in his novel The Corpse Washer, Antoon has a character wander through the ruin of the Baghdad National Library, which was destroyed during the 2003 invasion, and the National Film Archive, the repository of a century of Arab film-making destroyed by a US bomb. In Antoon's novel, the ruins of Baghdad are human and bodily: they are "gutted", "skeletons", "like a corpse". The bodies and souls of the people, conversely are like ruins: "I felt the wreckage I'd been carrying inside me mount even higher". Even language becomes a ruin in Antoon's first novel, I'Jaam, as the letters of Arabic themselves begin to disintegrate and the meaning of the text becomes unclear and ambiguous.

One of the most visible migrations of this trope is into cinema. In 2010, the award-winning Iraqi film Son of Babylon by director Mohamed al-Daradji made use of Iraq's unique wealth of cultural heritage, and shows characters wander in and out of ruins both ancient and modern. The film tells the story of a young Kurdish boy, Ahmed, who travels with his grandmother to search for his imprisoned father after the 2003 US invasion. They pass the ruins of Iraq's ancient cities, such as Ur, Nimrud and Bablyon, some of humanity's earliest settled cities, and through the modern ruins of Baghdad and Nasiriyah where police stations have been ransacked and prisons holding political prisoners have been destroyed. Rather than seeing memories held in the ruins, al-Daradji's characters find only blankness and emptiness, pointing to the meaningless and loss of war. Al-Daradji makes use of the ruins of war and civil strife to bring the atlal trope into a new context, but instead of signifying a specific memory, the ruins are asked to memorialise the loss of a whole generation, and point to loss without redemption.

From the earliest days of the Bedouin poets to the urban battlefields of modern wars, the trope of the ruin-wanderer has evolved and expanded. In the generations of violence that have devastated the urban environments of places like Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon, the atlal trope has become relevant again, and a new generation of artists has found a new way to make the ruins of the past speak.

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A bleak landscape stretches out in all directions, broken only by wind-hewed formations of sandstone. A lone traveller wanders this hostile, waterless place, looking for shelter. And then on the horizon, a line of ruined walls appears to him like an apparition. In the heat haze, they seem to hover above the ground.

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Birmingham Museums Trust (@birminghammuseumstrust) | Unsplash Photo Community

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See the best free to download photos, images, and wallpapers by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash.

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Edited by Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair

Format: Hardcover View Inside
Price: $65.00

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In a world where the making and consumption of art is constantly changing, the term "Islamic art" can be hard to define. Through the exploration of a wide array of media-from painting, sculpture, and photography to video and multimedia-an internationally renowned group of scholars, collectors, artists, and curators tackles questions such as whether the art has to come from the Middle East, whether it must have a religious component, and, indeed, whether the work of art must be made by a Muslim. Based on a series of papers presented at the 7th Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art in 2017, the essays in this volume grapple with these questions from a range of viewpoints. These texts-including beautiful illustrations of major works by contemporary artists from the Muslim world, including Newsha Tavakolian, Shahzia Sikander, Hassan Hajjaj and Lalla Essaydi-invoke a lively discussion of how the arts of the Islamic lands link the past with the present and the future.

Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair, who have shared the Hamad bin Khalifa Endowed Chair of Islamic Art at Virginia Commonwealth University since its establishment in 2005, are the co-organizers of the Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art.

"Sparking constructive dialogue and tackling elusive definitions . . . Incredibly valuable."
-Cindy Helms, New York Journal of Books

"Anyone interested in the contemporary Islamic world will find this a fascinating, globally diverse, highly provocative, and arrestingly beautiful volume-one that deserves a wide readership beyond art and art history."- CHOICE

ISBN: 9780300243475
Publication Date:
Publishing Partner: Distributed for the Qatar Foundation, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar

360 pages, 9 x 11 1/2
80 color + 170 b/w illus.

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Edited by Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair Format: Hardcover View Inside Price: $65.00 Our shopping cart only supports Mozilla Firefox. Please ensure you're using that browser before attempting to purchase. In a world where the making and consumption of art is constantly changing, the term "Islamic art" can be hard to define.