Harmony

Aya Mourad is a Lebanese artist based in Sydney, Australia. Her work is focused on Islamic pattern, drawing inspiration from her travels throughout West Asia and parts of Europe. She works primarily with watercolours but enjoys experimenting with other mediums. She has had creative pursuits since childhood and has been particularly drawn to Islamic art due to its unique combination of characteristics: spiritual evocation, symbolic value, decorative beauty, seamless harmony, symmetry and infinite repetitiveness. She aims to convey these attributes through her work and hopes to evoke feelings of joy and wonderment for its viewers. This work portrays a paradox of intricacy and simplicity that permeates space with seamless harmony. When viewed from afar, the detailed vegetal elements within each pod create a hypnotising view that draws the gaze inward, outward and in rotation, speading harmony in each direction. It contains 928 pods (including a subtle skeleton of purple pods adding an intertwining layer of depth) and an additional 32 rhomboidal shapes in the centre. This piece is a manipulation of a pattern that partially adorns the ceiling of Iwan-e- Sa’at at Imam Reza Shrine, Mashhad, Iran. The geometric construction follows the analysis of Adam Williamson.