This project draws inspiration thematically from the story of the twelve imams in Twelver Shia Islam, wherein Muhammad is succeeded by Ali, then Hasan, then Husayn. Artistically, this project draws from two different sources:

This sun, which I found on tumblr and

the circular, water-colored based designs via the artist Roanna Wells, who recently exhibited at the Tate Modern in London with a group of impressionist artists.

The yellow sun from Tumblr reminds me of the idea of a divine inherited spark being passed through the descendants of Muhammad. I like the clean, minimal graphics of the piece as well as the cyclical nature of the rays emanating from the center.  The works by Roanna Wells feature a similar fixation on the idea of a circular figure, but play with a unique medium — watercolor — which is very special because of its diaphanous and versatile nature, as well as its recent re-acceptance to the contemporary art milieu. I love the way that she breaks down large figures into individual pixels, which again remind me of the individual nature of the 12 imams descending from Muhammad.

I took these ideas and created this:

While, clearly, I will not be exhibiting on Tumblr anytime soon (nevertheless the Tate Modern), I do still appreciate the way that this piece does help me communicate major themes relating to Twelver Shiism. I kept the cyclical motion and the sun motif of the first drawing and used the varying colors and medium of Roanna Wells’s pieces. I used a primarily green color scheme, because I was keeping in mind the color associated with Husayn and, by extension, with protagonists, in the performance of the Taziyeh. Each ray of the sun represents one of the imams, beginning with Ali, who has the longest ray since he is closest chronologically to the prophet Muhammad, and continuing throughout the 11th imam, Hasan ibn Ali. The 12th imam, because of his status as “hidden” and the story associated with his coming to earth and then disappearing into a cave, only to reappear at the day of judgement, has been quite literally placed inside of an occluded area to the bottom left of the image. The idea is that the 12th imam is a piece of the sun which dropped off (as I feel that the gradual diminuendo of the length of the rays gives the sun the illusion of motion), was hidden, but still burns brightly and will one day be found.