Amrikeezi
In “Amrikeezi,” I make images out of American political text using the multifaceted styles and ethos of Islamic calligraphy.
The First Amendment is on a grocery store prayer rug. The Bill of Rights is the closest text we have to a holy book, and it gives me the right to express who I am and what I believe. I cannot be silenced before speaking. It will always make me emotional that this amendment is the first, as it makes expression the paramount value of this land, from which all other liberties are possible. Yet we do no service to such laws by restraining them to a life of text. Calligraphy transforms these words into totemic images, creating an experience of reverence and recognition.
I was inspired by Sini calligraphy artists in China for this piece. E Pluribus Unum is non-traditional calligraphy on a chemically blackened steel tablet. E Pluribus Unum, “out of many, one,” is the de facto motto of the United States. In Islam, calligraphy stylizes Qur’anic verses, giving concepts power by transforming them from words into instantly recognizable and compelling images. This image is confusing; this stylized Latin alphabet intentionally simulates Arabic aesthetic, before revealing that the nonsense is a meaningful alphabet that you already know. In uniting two often conflicting cultures, I hope to amplify ideals of harmony, reverence, and possibility, reshaping an empty slogan into something we can point to and say, “look.”