As the product of creation, we tend to forget our origins as spiritual beings trapped in the material world and suffer due to the separation from God. We must remember our primordial being to reach a state of oneness with the divine. Evelyn Underhill describes mysticism, an important concept in Sufism, as “the art of establishing his conscious relation with the absolute.” It involves “the perfect consummation of the Love of God.” Similar to the Prophet Muhammad's experience of the Mi'raj, Sufis strive for a direct, personal experience of the divine. There are many ways to achieve this relationship of love with the divine and remember our primordial selves, but I found the concepts of whirling and Qawwalis present in South Asia particularly captivating.

In my calligram project, I painted a woman participating in the whirling who has successfully transcended the abyss that separates the human from the divine. Prior to her whirling, she was in a state of the Shariah (the “outer”), present only in the physical world. Through whirling, her method of Tariqah (the “path”), she was able to ascend to a state of Haqiqah (“the real”), represented by the transcendent yellow light inspired by the Light verse from the Quran, and the appearance of Allah on her dress. Although Allah was not visible in the Zahir (“the physical”), once the woman became one with the divine, the Batin (“the hidden”) revealed itself through the calligraphy of Allah on her dress. Through this spiritual practice, the  woman was able to liberate herself from the separation from Allah and establish a conscious relationship with the divine.