Sama Izhar

“The Sema”, a sacred dance embodies spiritual reality into physical movement. It’s beautiful simplicity and ritual efficacy make it a powerful aesthetic performance. “The Spiritual Offering” captures the whirling dervishes with their right palm open directed towards the sky, receiving God’s beneficence, the left palm pointing down towards the earth giving what is received to mankind engulfed in darkness. During the Sema the dervishes convey God’s spiritual gift to the people upon whom God looks with a divine watchfulness and through this gesture they become the medium for God’s Grace to enter the world.

While exploring the illusion reality and the movement of dance I continue to find an exciting inspirational and creative connection between my paintings and it. I wanted to feel the movement of ‘The Kathakar’ in the stillness of the night and at the same time wanted to carry within itself a feeling of intimacy…

Most of us require some deliberate form of daily withdrawal… to be alone… to reflect…contemplating in an environment of silence, simplicity, solitude and stillness. And of course there are times when we enter that mode unconsciously and not so deliberately… just naturally. Through ‘Contemplation’ I have tried capturing the latter… a gesture that I find myself with quite frequently.