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05   Magic Squares







Pastel Drawings
August 2023- Ongoing



The talismanic practice of magic squares, some of the first algorithmic formulae, were key to developments in mathematics as well as the understanding of Sufi philosophical principles and healing practices. 

The Arabic term for a magic square is wafq al-a’dad, “the harmonious disposition of numbers”. My magic squares are personal records and spells for my familial and interpersonal relationships. Its a practice that slows me down and helps me to organise my mind.

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Manuscripts




Gold Silver and Copper leaf and pastel on repurposed book sleeves 
July 2023- Ongoing


The cardboard sleeves my books arrive in were starting to pile up. At some point I opened one out flat and found it was a curious object in itself — two sides, a spine down the middle, itself a kind of book. I'd been thinking about how information moves, how easy it is now, compared to a time when books were copied by hand — always unique, slight variations slipping in.

I've long been fascinated by ancient manuscripts, maybe from growing up learning to read the Quran: a mysterious text I couldn't understand in any ordinary way. The whole object of it fascinated me. You couldn't touch it unless you were clean, and it had to sit above every other book on the shelf. I wanted to find its secret meanings, to decode it.

Once we took a family trip to Mali and visited the old libraries of Djenné and Timbuktu. In Djenné, the imam led us to a small mud room lit with fluorescent light and showed us some very old books — medicine, mathematics, astrology, magic. So mysterious, so dangerous, so forbidden. I could feel their power.