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GenEd 1134

Polina Galouchko

This digital artwork that I’ve created has several sources of inspiration.

First one is the motive of creation, in particular, the fact that God singled out Adam to create him with His hands – and did not create any other animate being with His hands.

“Allah asked: “O Iblis! What prevented you from prostrating to what I created with My Own hands? Were you arrogant [then], or were you [already] among the haughty?”” [Saad 38:75]

The fact that God created Adam with His hands and with an imprint of divine – possibly, with humans being the apex of His creation: “Indeed, We created humans in the best form” [At-Tin 95:4]. This is interestingly reflected in the idea that the anatomy of the human hand resembles the name of God written in Arabic [see picture below]. Thus, the name of God is visible to a human being every day – one just has to look at one’s own hand.

The second source of inspiration was Michelangelo's famous fresco painting The Creation of Adam (c. 1512). Even though God is not usually depicted in Islam so as to not anthropomorphize Him, this famous painting -- in particular, the part of it which includes God's hand, stretched out, giving life to Adam, and Adam's hand right next to God's hand -- resonated with me as I was thinking about the creation of man by the hand of God and the name of God imprinted on the human hand.

My calligram project aims to bring those several ideas together.

The two hands depicted -- one of God and another of man -- resemble the hands from Michelangelo's painting, and the name of God in Arabic -- Allah -- is written on their hands, signifying both the act of creation and the elevated status of humans among all other creation, which is represented as cosmos -- stars and galaxies -- in the background.

"He is the One who made perfectly everything He has created: He began the creation of human beings with clay, and made His progeny from a quintessence of the nature of a fluid despised: but He fashioned him in due proportion, and breathed into him something of His spirit..." [Qur'an 32:7-9].

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47. Willie Lowry For this project I chose the word “Tawhid”. For “scenery” I used the main symbols associated with all 3 Abrahamic religions and then had Tawhid written into the starry night sky. This night sky could resemble a number of stories associated with all the books. Such as the Isra and Mi’raj which are a part of the night journey where Muhammed ascended to heaven and spoke with God. From the Torah, Jacob, or Yaqub, as known in Islam, wrestled with God under the night sky and that is where he received the name Israel. And in the Bible Jesus, or Isa, was taken away to be crucified late at night. Tawhid is a term that relates to the oneness of God. This idea can be taken literally as God being one entity, and that there are no gods other than God. This phrase can also be related to the unity of God. Unity, as characteristic of God, being uncompromisable and acting as a single being. God as the joining force between all things and people. The idea of God being supreme is, of course, a common trait shared between the Abrahamic religions. Beyond that fact, I chose these symbols along with this word as a representation of the “oneness” of these religions. Despite different ways of practice, different main figures, language barriers, and many other differences, these religions all pray and aim to serve, the same God. I wanted to highlight how they are distinct and yet together by replacing the star associated with the moon with the star of David. Despite the separation there is still an undividable unity between these groups, even if it does not always seem that way.

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