Hamra Abbas’s multi-disciplinary practice engages histories of sexuality, faith, and decoration through a close observation of gestures, icons, and images. This image is part of Abbas’ ongoing series, Kaaba Picture as a Misprint, which problematizes the visual and spiritual “truth” of the sacred site through colours. The iconic structure in the Great Mosque of Mecca, black in colour, is deconstructed into its parts: cyan, magenta, and yellow blocks that stretch out to blur the boundaries of black as Kaaba and truth as singular. Abbas’s chromatic transgression builds a futuristic ornament, grounded in plurality, which can be unfolded from different cultural points to meet discrete spiritual ends.

This work is included in Ornamenting Relation, curated by Noor Bhangu, which features artists Hamra Abbas, Golnar Adili, Azadeh Elmizadeh, and Ayesha Singh. Through the individual lightboxes, the artists present their encounters with the ornamental canon of Islamic visual culture to reveal the continuities and discontinuities of the field in relation to contemporary art and political discourses.

Taking inspiration from traditional aspects of Islamic art, outlined by Laura Marks as “almost always avoid[ing] depicting anything with a face, anything with a body, and even sometimes anything with an outline,” Ornamenting Relation seeks to understand the transgressive and relational potentialities of abstract aesthetics in mediating dialogue across diverse cultures.