This exhibition is an installation made up of three rooms: The Aphotic Zone, The State of Stutter, and The White Room.

The Aphotic Zone: Where light does not reach, or hardly does. That it “hardly does” means it still does a little, though not enough; for if there is no light, there is neither vision nor is there representation. The sensory experience of the lack of light is possible only through a passage from light to its lack.

The State of Stutter: Having collaborated with the “Retribution Committee,” the calligrapher Emād al-Kottāb was arrested in 1912, and even though released after a while, remained under surveillance up until Reza Pahlavi was enthroned. Some of his prison writings, generally known as his prison Siyāh Mašqs (lit. “black practice”), are at once practice and improvised writing, part complaint, part prayer and mantra, part delusion, these pieces are highly fragmented, with no punctuation and no lineation. In a process that artist calls “šarh” (interpretation), which also means “disentangling” and “tearing apart”, he offers a new formation of one of Emād al-Kottāb’s Siyāh Mašqs. In addition, nine works done with paper and ink, titled “Black šarh”, which are another abstraction of Emād al-Kottāb’s Siyāh Mašqs, will be displayed in the same room.  

The White Room: consists of three Light Boxes, titled “The Origin of the World”, with nine paper and ink pieces, titled “White šarh”. Together they form artists’ interpretation of “šarh”, as an act and part of the underlying theme of the exhibition, “light” which is an imperative element in this room.