HE WHO CREATED THE HEAVENS AND EARTH IN SIX DAYS

2013

Through this artwork, Awartani depicts the story of the six days of creation found within the Islamic teachings through the aid of traditional sacred geometry and illumination. The six panels dually depict the creation story as well as bring to life the highly rigors process behind the construction of an illuminated manuscript commonly found in Qurans and other religious texts.

These Illuminated manuscripts where typically made with the purpose to represent the heavens and the earth through the use of and aesthetic routed in symbolism and numerology. Since the use of the human form is not favoured in Islamic art, craftsmen throughout history have adopted and elevated the use of numbers, geometry,colour and floral motifs as a visual language to translate esoteric ideas. On a parallel level these art forms were used to create abstract representations of God’s creations on earth as a form of worship and spiritual devotion, as geometry can be found both on a microcosmic and macrocosmic level throughout all planes of creation, and when studied is a way to understand the hidden language of the universe.

The design of the artwork has been conceived based completely around six-fold geometry, ranging from the twelve-fold central rosette, to the six boarders encompassing it to the proportion of the whole painting which is based on the route three triangle, all being part of the six-fold ‘family’ found within sacred geometry. The colours Awartani has adopted play an equally important role, as within the Islamic tradition, blue and green are considered to be sacred and reflect water and vegetation both highly rare in desert countries where the religion was founded.