Abdus Salaam | INSAAN: RMB Latitudes Art Fair 2024

The word انسان (Insaan) translates as human being. The word’s roots are انس (uns), meaning ‘intimate’ or ‘love’, and نسي (nasyia), meaning ‘forgetful’, defining the human being as both the intimate one and the forgetful one. This poetic fragrance is often alluded to by the mystics and scholars of Islam as it so poignantly delivers us to the essence of humanity being that of love, a reality that we often forget within our terrestrial, ethereal and Divine planes.

 

This body of work, made over the course of six weeks in residence during the month-long fast of Ramadan, ties this land and its hominid remains, this river and its polluted state, notions of our global environmental shortcomings alongside intimate and personal moments. It asks if perhaps love — or the reminder of it, being the essence of our being and therefore our sanctuary across multiple planes — might ease the anxieties, tensions, and personal fears that we project outwardly into the echo chamber of forgetfulness.

 

This notion is spread across three spaces. Held in the Screening Room, Chapter 1 starts with water, earth, and light, for we are embodied souls who’s transcendence is through our earthly experience and our planet is but a reflection of our communal state. Chapter 2 is in the Covered Space, with tones of the heart and time, where change is most true. And Chapter 3 is in the Residency Studio.

 

 

Dream of love’s final flooding

Drown in place,
When solitude is touching

Float upon knowing,

Where everything turns to nothing

And all I see is the feeling of your face.

 

-Abdus Salaam