Faig Ahmed: Weaving a Wonderful Tale

Art Week in Dubai is in full swing.  Gallery openings, design days, art fairs, art nights, workshops and enchanting exhibitions and installations have captured viewers and art lovers from all over the world.

Many have immersed themselves in the experience and through this have formed wonderful new relationships with friends and artists. I personally have met people from all over the world that I had only known before through social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram.  Together we have attended events and shared stories, thereby getting to  know a little bit more about each other and about other cultures.

The stories we have shared with each other have further helped to weave the wonderful tale of interconnection and shared humanity that is slowly making itself heard today.   They have helped us to let go of stereotypes and question existing boundaries. 

One installation during Art Week captured my attention the minute I heard about it via social media. @cuadroart, the Instagram account for the Cuado Art Gallery, posted a picture with the caption, 

“Faig Ahmed’s yarn threads have started to stretch out of Cuadro and into the balconies of the neighboring buildings in the DIFC Gate Village” 

Faig Ahmed is from Baku, Azerbaijan. Currently he is exploring carpets, weaving digital patterns with the conventional recurring patterns to create bold optical illusions.  Faig states that “Tradition is the main factor creating the society as a self regulated system. Changes in the non-written rule happen under influence of global modern culture.”

Faig works are currently “an instantaneous expression” and he believes that in today’s world, “ideas that have been formed for ages are being changed in moments”.

One online article by a blogger called Will had this to say about Faig Ahmed’s work:

“Carpets are often regarded as an indestructible icon of the East, and a deeply respected item in many households used for visual and decorative means.  Faig’s work alters these standard stereotypes and creates new boundaries with a fresh outcome.” 

In his current installation, Faig takes this two-dimensional craft and by stretching elements of his work into space, takes it into a third dimension. As I read all of this, the tale became more captivating, and like a reader caught up in a gripping storyline, I was being drawn into this wonderful web. 

The DIFC is one of my favorite places to photograph in Dubai.  That the installation involved buildings was a bonus. 

I love taking photographs of buildings and presenting them in such a way that the viewer is encouraged to take on a new perspective.  We are so caught up in the beliefs and traditions of our respective cultures, that it is not always easy to see things from a different perspective.  Through my mobile photography I attempt to introduce this concept visually, both by not using a traditional camera and through my images.   

The evolving installation that met me in the Gate Village did not disappoint me.

As I began to capture my impressions of the installation as it unfolded, I realized the story being woven was almost interactive, with personal impressions being woven into the threads by its viewers. 

The installation has a dynamic movement and it excited me to see the buildings being joined in a way that made them look as if they were reaching out to each other, sharing stories and sharing the space they were in more intimately than before. This so tied in with my recent blog in which I received a tweet from a tower. 

My love of architecture and my passion for promoting interconnection through here2here  were being represented visually in a form I had not imagined before. 

When a couple met and hugged underneath Faig’s installation, another chapter in the tale was complete. 

As the story of the installation unfolded on Instagram it was gaining yet another dimension, this time in cyberspace.  

There was mention of “His palette of colorful yarns” and the viewer was informed that “Scaffolding keeps getting higher and higher as he works yarn from the gallery walls out the window and all the way up to the roof.”

While preparing this piece I came across an ancient metaphor:

“thought is a thread, and the raconteur is a spinner of yarns - but the true storyteller, the poet, is a weaver.”

A weaver of a wonderful tale had arrived in my world and I determined to meet him at Art Nights. Patiently waiting my turn I noticed his open engagement with others.  I was able to show him some of the photos I had taken and see his delight when he saw the couple hugging under his work. 

As mentioned earlier, I was present with Igers from all over the world at Art Nights, our online connections having overflowed into physical space, just as Faig’s yarns had moved from inside the gallery to the neighbouring rooftops outside. 

Antoine de Saint-Exupery spoke about “a mesh into which relationships are tied” and this was probably what Tim Berner-Lee had in mind when he created the term “World Wide Web” in 1989.

As we make our way through cyberspace, let us remember the importance of relationships. 

The complex membrane of information, called the noosphere by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, that is currently enveloping the globe is fueled by human consciousness.  Each tweet we send, each instagram pic we post or every facebook update we make, is a thread that can add to the beauty of the unfolding carpet of life. As we encounter others online in here2here space, let us treat them with respect as we listen deeply to what they share. As we collaborate with others, let us remember that we have more similarities than differences. 

We are threads in a wonderful tale, but we are also the weavers. 

Notes on the Skyline

For a while now words have been hiding from me. Or perhaps they are always there and it is I who have failed to find them. This evening they flow from my fingers as if asking me to let them loose to speak of the spoken and attempt to point to that which is beyond mere letters.  

While attending a poetry recital this afternoon by Bahareh Amidi, I was aware that  words filled the room but that so much more that was unspoken permeated the air. 

The lady who hugged the poetess afterwards, clearly deeply touched; the college professor standing, clapping and calling for more; a chat with a young man, Abhinav Chauhan, whose desire in life is to get rid of the word hunger from the dictionary; the two calligraphers I met afterwards whose work spoke of an inexplicable beauty; all these little happenings and others were filled with an energy which words could not express.

The poet Rumi wrote,

“Explanation by words makes many things clear,

but love unexplained is clearer.”

And so I write - if only to allude to the unexplained love which is everpresent.

As I drove home from the Emirates Literature Festival, the skyline at sunset was breathtaking.  I attempted to capture it and have called this piece, “Notes on the Skyline”.  Each building seemed to be singing its own note to make up a beauty which far surpassed the sum of the parts.

The architectural beauty of Dubai has been part of my life these last few weeks where the weather has allowed the flaneur in me to stroll Dubai’s streets.  I have attempted to capture the beauty of Dubai in my instagram pics and to allow these photos to speak for me. 

It might sound like a cliche but we are all notes on the skyline of life. Each note is vital for the symphony of life to be heard. 

Each one of us is also a stroke in the calligraphy of life. The flow and patterns of our beings interweave and become an expression of beauty and significance. Those with ears to hear, will hear this beauty.  

The words of one of Bahareh’s poems still ring in my ears:

“Life is knowing that we are all here and we are all connected”.  

This evening I celebrate life.  

Linda in Wonderland

The calendar year was 2012, one hundred and fifty years since Lewis Carroll first began writing “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.  Sitting next to a stream, Alice was still pretty much aware of the fact that even though she sometimes thought she knew who she was, she was also conscious of having changed several times over the years, not to mention since that morning. Bored, she had peeped into her sister’s book, but it had no pictures or conversations. Alice found that weird.

All of a sudden, a white rabbit with iphone in hand, alarm going off rather loudly, attracted Alice’s attention. Following the sound of the alarm playing one of her favorite hits,  Alice ran after him. He passed a digital stream, and as he popped down a rabbit-hole Alice followed him further, only to find herself soon tumbling into what seemed to be a very deep well.

 

Whether the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, Alice did not know. What she did notice after a while were the symbols on the sides of the well depicting the various portals available to those entering this world of wonder. 

She did not know it yet, but by clicking on a link, the traveler in cyberspace can be transported from one place to another. By downloading an app, the user is offered tools and information unheard of before. 

As she fell, Alice remembered what she had learnt at school that week.  Her teacher, a forward thinking wonderful lady, had introduced her class to mindfulness. Sitting in a circle each morning the children focused on their breathing and the feelings they were experiencing. Alice decided that this was as good a time as ever to put this all into practice, and so, taking a deep breath, she allowed herself to be fully aware of herself, her feelings, her muddled emotions and her surroundings, which were rather strange to say the least.

She felt she must have reached the centre of the earth when she suddenly landed with a thump. She thought she spotted the white rabbit but he soon disappeared out of sight. 

Alice found herself in a room with a little table.  On it lay a tablet. To examine it she picked it up, swiped its screen and squealed with delight at what she found. There were stories with pictures that were interactive when she touched them.  There were conversations going on in real time! There were maps and dictionaries, newspapers and magazines. She could play games and even draw using her finger.

She noticed a camera and a special app and before long was taking pictures of herself which transformed her at once into someone tall, someone short, someone with a huge funny face and then someone all squashed up. She squealed with delight.

Swiping the screen yet again she found an app called Instagram. She realized that she had not landed in the centre of the earth, but was somehow in all places at once, as she watched photos from all over the world appear on her screen in real time. This was truly here2here! People commented on these photos and she noticed that many of the comments said Linda!!!

Linda? She thought her name was Alice! But then anything was possible when time was no longer linear and she felt herself so close to the other and the other felt as she.

To find out more about who she could possibly now be, she clicked on wikipedia to discover that the name Linda might be derived from the same root as the linden tree, with a German and ultimately Celtic root.  The image of the tree is often used to indicate a gentle personality. 

Alice was confused but read on. Linda could come from the “Celt Lindworm”, another variation of the mythical concept know as the ouroboros, the serpent biting its own tail. The ouroboros represents the perpetual cyclic renewal of life. More worlds of wonder were possibly awaiting her, whether she be Alice or Linda or whoever. 

Muchalinda was also the name of a snake-like being who protected the Buddha from the elements after his enlightenment.

The name Linda in Xhosa means “wait” and that perhaps made a little sense. Perhaps if she waited long enough it would all become clear to her.

This was getting curiouser and curiouser, until for now at least, it all suddenly made sense.

Linda was also used in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese to mean beautiful, pretty or cute.  People on Instagram were indicating that they liked a particular photo!!!

Alice looked up and saw the Mad Hatter laughing at her. She was not sure whether time had stopped or it had been transcended. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the Cheshire Cat smiling.

---

When starting this website, it was my intention to explore the concept of here2here through word and image and thereby promote a shared vision of diversity within unity. My blog and my presence on twitter are, and share, my explorations through word. To explore here2here through the use of image I have recently entered the world of Instagram.

I often feel like Alice, as a world of everyday happenings, memories and creativity appears on my screen in real time. In the gallery, “Some Instagram Pics”, you can see some of the images I have shared. If of course, you are on Instagram you can see more of these pics there. If not you can follow them here.

The image is a powerful tool and one that I believe can assist in an opening of the heart to compassion. 

 

We live in wonderful times. Wonder is there when we stop to see it. What is more, modern technology is making it possible to share these moments if we so choose.

I end with one such example. On New Year’s Eve, the Burj Khalifa, lit up with fireworks.  Standing on my balcony directly opposite the Burj Khalifa, overwhelmed at one stage by tears, I witnessed an event of beauty. You may not have been with me, but in a sense you are as I share with you a video of the event made possible through moving imagery and the world of youtube. Take a few minutes to step into this wonderland.

The Gathering

Visiting the Pavilion in Downtown Dubai yesterday, I noticed that there were workers completing the installation of a new sculpture on the sidewalk.

After the installation was completed I went outside to photograph the figures from various angles, before going inside to continue what I was working on. 

As sunset approached the pink fingers stretching across the sky to embrace the Burj Khalifa drew me outside again. The chatting figures of the sculpture seemed happy in their new setting. 

While photographing them a gentleman and lady approached. Seeing me photograph the figures, she told me that the gentleman was the artist. I was privileged to meet architect and sculptor Xavier Corbero. 

A man with incredible vision, Corbero has built a dream home whose spaces are linked by underground passageways.

“His original vision of the property has since expanded to include a retreat for artists, studio spaces, workshops, a foundry, dozens of surreal chambers for residents and guests, sprawling galleries, living rooms, a myriad of hobbit nooks all connected by serpentine stairways filling over 10,000 square meters.”

Salvador Dali was Corbero’s first patron and Corbero is now considered to be Spain’s most important living sculptor. 

"You must leave things open so the person enjoys or looks," says Corbero. "I feel that when people look at a piece of art they become artists, they see what they see not what there is. What there is helps them to see something else and they feel better because they see something they were not seeing before seeing that. That's what I like to do.”

Standing next to his work, he seemed to effortlessly blend in with the figures, even unintentionally perhaps, replicating the pose of the figure he was standing next to.

 

In her piece on Corbero’s work in Beirut, Micheline Hazou, @mich1mich writes,

“Perhaps it’s the way the figures are positioned, in relation to the space and to one another that is as important as their bulk and mass…”

Corbero has said, "What is good is the scale, if you get the scale right, space stops being space to become mind. And this happens in a sculpture and it happens in architecture."

The sculpture, called The Gathering, invites one into its circle. The chatting figures capture for me the mix that is Dubai, a city where  many different nationalities and cultures meet.

The figures lean into each other with attention. They are accommodating of each other’s space and seem to acknowledge the other, while at the same time forming a unit. The energy flowing between them as they connect is almost palpable.

There is the sense that more personalities are about to join the gathering and engage in conversation. This excites me as non-judgmental listening and peaceful dialogue is so crucial in the world right now.

I immediately think too of this here2here space where we are all gathering now. What does it matter where we are physically situated in time and space. We can gather, be present here together, converse and share. We might all be different but we are more similar than we can imagine.

Whether gathering on sidewalks of cities, or sensing our interconnectedness in a large web made possible by technology, together we bear witness to Presence.

Mindfulness and The Flâneur

Having blogged about The Green Turtles of Ras Al Jinz last week, it is with amazement this week that I note the following:

"Around 1840 it was briefly fashionable to take turtles for a walk in the arcades. The flâneurs liked to have the turtles set the pace for them." Walter Benjamin in “Arcades Project”, a study of 19th century Parisian life.

The Flâneur: A Radical-Chic Icon by sketchbloom 

Viewed through a 21st century filter this might at first appear horrific, but understanding the accompanying vocabulary, background and concepts, and seeing with a 19th century perspective, our focus alters. 

Referring to a person who walks the city in order to experience it, Charles Baudelaire is said to have coined the term “flâneur” from the verb ‘flâner’, which means “to stroll” in French. 

In the 19th century, industrialization had brought with it many social and economic changes.  Many children of upper middle class families were given an income without having to work. They had no reason to hurry and so dawdling was in a sense encouraged. While many of these young people might have become cynical in their observations of urban living, others participated in it in order to fully observe. The flâneur was born.

The construction of the Paris Arcades in the early 19th century, encouraged this movement. Passageways through neighbourhoods were covered with glass roofs, creating an interior-exterior experience. Precursors of modern day malls, these arcades offered not only an escape from the hustle and bustle of street crowds and markets, but were also ideal environments for flâneurs.

The flâneur would stroll through these arcades, at home in these interior-exterior worlds.  Part of the crowd, but at the same time totally aloof from it, the flâneur would take in the sights and so experience the surrounding culture. Determined looking required a slow place and a turtle on a leash would enforce this!

Words always contain layers of potential meaning, and the flâneur offers us a new way of seeing the world.

“Flâneur is not limited to someone committing the physical act of peripatetic stroll in the Baudelairian sense, but can also include a ‘complete philosophical way of living and thinking’”.  Wikipedia 

As mindfulness gains in popularity, so too I believe, will the word “flâneur” make a 21st century comeback; this time with added connotations.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, often defines mindfulness as “moment by moment, non-judgmental awareness”. Whether the 19th century flaneur was non-judgmental or not is debatable, but when our “dilly-dallying” becomes conscious, we are certainly practicing mindfulness.

Are we able to sit or walk somewhere and merely observe without judging?

Are we able to be mall flâneurs? George Davis, @virtualDavis, encourages us to consider becoming a metro flâneur!

Are we able to watch our own inner landscapes with detached observation?

To what extent are we able to view our surroundings with the boundaries between interior and exterior dismantled?

When we access the virtual highways, where access to information is rapid, do we ever stop to recollect that there are many others present online at any given moment, simply looking? 

Are we willing to slow down and not retweet without reading the linked content first?

Speed, whether online or offline, is a characteristic of the modern world. The flâneur reminds us to set the pace of our own lives.

Cast as a character in the 21st century drama of life, the flâneur thus begins to play the role of consciousness.

We hopefully won’t leash a turtle, but we can remember that found in the mythology of most cultures, the turtle is often linked to creation and thereby creativity. A creature of both land and sea, the turtle encourages an attitude of adapting and flourishing regardless of environment. 

Mindfulness offers us a key.