Hawaii

“My People” is a two-part mural now housed outside the entrance of Doris Duke’s Shangri-La museum of Islamic art, culture and design. It is from the poem—The Penultimate Address of the “Red Indian" in Front of the White Man (1992)—and reads: ”سيرجع شعبي هوءاً و ضوءاً وماء” My people will return as air and light and water. The mural uses a pixelated script with added figurative roots to 10th-century floriated Kufic calligraphy to make a site-specific commentary about colonization, displacement, and loss of land, people, and identity.

Shangri-La Museum of Islamic Art, Design and Culture, Honolulu- Hawaii. Paint on wood. August 2018. Permanent onsite mural.