mounir fatmi Morocco, 1970
Mechanization 08, 2013
Collage with prayer rugs on plywood.
70 cm. diameter.
From as early as the 7th or 8th century, Islamic scholars were developing innovative tools connected to science, mathematics, and engineering. Beautifully illustrated drawings and diagrams of wheels, gears, machines,...
From as early as the 7th or 8th century, Islamic scholars were developing innovative tools connected to science, mathematics, and engineering. Beautifully illustrated drawings and diagrams of wheels, gears, machines, astronomy, optics, among other subjects, and their corresponding texts and notations appear in the earliest examples of books and manuscripts from this era. Inspired in part by these images, Mounir Fatmi began to explore the relationship of the machine to culture and religion through this series of collages on canvas. Created between 2010-2013, this body of work is made by using cut up pieces of Muslim prayer rugs sewn onto canvas. Each of these collages is unique in color, pattern and style, yet they are all linked by the repetitive use of the circle, symbolic of the turning wheels of the machine. Mechanization is also influenced by the ancient Greek discovery of the astrolabe, an instrument that greatly influenced early Islamic scholars as well. First created around 200 BC and considered the foremost tool for astronomy and determining time until the mid-1600s, astrolabes were fascinating and exquisitely detailed metal disks carved with intricate markings of scales, numbers and images related to the celestial. There are some works in this series in which the canvas has been cut into a circular shape, and this most closely links this series to the Astrolabes. They display a shifting composition that directly references the breaking down of time.