Saber Javanmard | Graduation Project | KABK | 2018

In
troduction:

When I was twenty years old, I burned Quran in front of my mother’s eyes. I was ex-
tremely angry, but not particularly at Quran. My problem was the contradictory two
faces of religion in my country. On one hand, Quran as an important, poetic and his-
torical document that could help us to be better and wiser persons who would enter
heaven and on the other hand, the dominant and powerful religious authorities who
were taking benefit from their religious and political power. My act of burning Quran
did not derive from my anger to the book itself, but the people who had taken political
power because of religion, in this case Quran. Yet, the problem is there and the solu-
tion as well. Right afterwards, the remorse overcame me. Repentance and self-punish-
ment caused by the fact that I did not merely burned Quran, but also and even more
killed that beautiful, sacred image of this book in my mother’s mind who was crying
very hard and begging Allah to take away the anger from her young son and scared
of consequences of doomsday. I was very familiar with both faces of the book. I know
the dark side which was illustrative and had to do with meaning of the text, beside
political/religious context, but I also knew the good side which was more abstract and
poetic and that was in arrangement of the sentences and the recited versions of Qu-
ran. Yet, both sides are there, with me.

Theme: Ambivalence (Duality)

Nowadays, we encounter an acute and complex political situation and regarding the
role of religion in it’s political context, ambivalence takes a significant stage in this
situation. Somehow, we all deal with duality about Islam or any other religions and
their stimulating, persuasive role on propelling and shaping some extremist individ-
uals. For instance, coping with a terroristic attack reminds us the old question that if
religion is good and peaceful enough by itself or not. Nevertheless, apart from social
context and political conflicting situation, we should not disregard the aesthetic and
poetic aspects of these historical documents such as Quran, Bible, etc.

Project title: It will be a hard day for disbelievers

Project concept: Self-Punishment and repentance

In quran there are many verses about the punishment for disbelievers, illustrating
hell and the consequences of insulting the scripture. For my project, I will have two
main and different approaches to share my ambivalent feeling with audience. While
one medium (painting and sound) shows the aesthetic and poetic side of Quran, the
other medium (performance) will show the self-punishment by reciting Quran and
writing and erasing those verses over and over, a desperate effort for repentance.

In order to achieve this, I will need to take a curative task of selecting these verses
first. Furthermore, to be able to convey the message that we should not scarify the
aesthetics of Quran with nowadays political orientations against this book, I will visu-
alize the selected verses in the most beautiful way, using painting.

Beside these all, there will be an index book of verses as an explanatory document, set
in a typeface specifically made for my graduation project. Hopefully, the contradic-
tion between these two approaches will share the ambivalence with audience and the
simple message that Quran can be seen as a book of poetry or a sign of extreme Islam-
ic thoughts.

Last but not least, beside my graduation project and positioning myself as a
Middle-Eastern designer and artist in Western community, Maybe I will be able
to make it up for my mother, even one percent.

-> Below, you can find the link to my rehearsal performance and in the next pages,
some visual examples of my paintings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VktnGVHHG-8
‘It is you who are the Knowledgeable, the wise’, acrylic on wood, 180.200 cm