AND YOUR LORD YOU SHOULD GLORIFY

2016

The piece is a continuation of Awartani’s study exploring the subject of palindromes within the Quran, which are a form of wordplay where by words, phrases, numbers or any other sequence of characters that when read backwards or forwards are the same.

In this piece she has focused on a verse from Surah Al- Muddaththir (The Cloaked One), which reads as ‘rabbaka fakabbir’ (And Your Lord You Should Glorify, Quran 74:3). Here, reading the sentence backwards including vowels would not create a palindrome. However, taking out consonants only (which are here: r, b, k, f, k, b, r) can create a palindrome.

Continuing with here research and experimentation with developing codes, Awartani has taken the practice of palindromes a step further by converting each letter of the sentence into there numerical value using the Abjad Hawaz system and then into a symbol that embodies that number, in turn allowing the viewer to decipher this code.