AYAH - Sign
AYAH – Sign was a collaborative project conceived as a means to engage with the community at the Grenfell Tower. The project was hosted by Art in Flux, and myself as co-curator, workshops lead and exhibiting artist.
A series of workshops, artist talks and a collaborative group exhibition on the theme of Islamic digital art were held at ACAVA’s Maxilla Place, London, W10.
We invited the local communities affected by the Grenfell disaster to explore new forms of artistic practice by focusing on pattern-making and combining this with digital technologies to create a collaborative community installation. Patterns used in the workshops and the final artwork were geometric and floral compositions, inspired by architectural sites throughout the Islamic world including those in Morocco, Spain, India and Turkey.
Audiences of all ages were invited to take part in the workshops providing an understanding of Islamic art and the production methods for traditional pattern-making from Islamic visual culture.
The artworks produced by community participants in workshops were digitised and added to a custom animation produced by Oliver Gingrich of Art in FLUX. From 30th June – 1 July 2018, the culmination of the project including the AYAH group exhibition, was held at Maxilla Space, neighbouring the Grenfell Tower in North Kensington.
The exhibition also displayed the outcome of the collaborative community installation alongside further examples of digital art from myself and artists Zarah Hussain and Ben Johnson. The collection illustrated hybrid practices in contemporary Islamic art where digital technologies were utilised either as a tool or medium.
AYAH also included a specialist talks event centred around Art as Collaborative Community Practice, with a panel of guests speaking on the subject. This was followed by the public art display, whereby the AYAH animation was displayed on the grounds of the Grenfell Tower, bringing together locals, participants and passers-by to consider a reflection on togetherness and community spirit.
This project was kindly supported by Arts Council England, The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, ACAVA, and Projection Artworks.
