Circumambulating the Kaaba : Drawing the Space of the Heart

Περίληψη

In the Islamic world, the Kaaba (black cube) in Mecca is considered the heart and centre of the world. As a sacred edifice where the Hajj pilgrimage is performed, the Kaaba acts as a ritual attractor that connects the transcendental world of God and the corporeal world. The philosopher Ibn al-‘Arabī (1165–1240) argued that our own heart is also a Kaaba. Considering this, I explore the performativity of drawing-out an Islamic ontology of space and time that reflects a heart-space relationship. Following Ibn al-‘Arabī’s metaphysics and a legacy of spatiotemporal drawing, wherein geometry, philosophy and architecture find common ground, I have discovered that the creative practice of drawing cosmograms is tahqīq (witnessing and attestation). Therefore, my drawings move beyond the limits of representation and perform as autoethnographic material that bears witness and attests to lived experiences. My drawings are made up of love and loss, presence and absence, and life and death that connect the past, present, and future. In this essay, I reveal that drawing serves to diagram language, culture, memory, and emotions and conclude that drawing has become a way to perform tawaf (circumambulate the heart) and create a makān (space of being) to be encountered.