Khaled Sabsabi: Sydney Biennale installation brings Sufism to West
Khaled Sabsabi’s installation will bring a sense of his Sufi religion to a Western audience at the Sydney Biennale.
The fragrance of roses is sweet and heady, and is imbuing artist Khaled Sabsabi’s garage studio with a sense of something spiritual. “It’s Indian rose,” Sabsabi says, holding a vial of scented oil to his nose. “There’ll be dishes of this throughout the space.”
Ahead of the 21st Biennale of Sydney, the acclaimed Australian-Lebanese artist is giving Review a sneak preview of his work, Bring the Silence, which premieres at the exhibition curated by Mami Kataoka.
Crouching over a row of computer screens, Sabsabi fiddles with a button before the monitors flicker into life, revealing five alternative perspectives of the same unfamiliar scene.
The studio fills with the sound of hushed voices and movement. A crowd of men is circling what appears to be a four-poster bed adorned with garlands of jasmine and frangipani. As they move in a clockwise direction, concealed cameras capture their action as they scatter fuchsia petals over a mound of green cloth. It looks like someone is asleep beneath it.
The men move with a sense of purpose and reverence. Some stop to bow their covered heads, while others carry plates stacked with petals. Suddenly their actions are clear. It’s a shrine.
“What you’re looking at is the maqam. It’s a small room, pretty much the size of this garage,” Sabsabi says. “In Sufism, when saints die, they’re not washed or prepared for burial, they’re just left where they fall. And around them the shrine appears.”
Sabasi says he was honoured to be granted exclusive access to film at the shrine of Nizamuddin, the “resting place of one of the great Sufi saints of the region”, Muhammad Nizamuddin Auliya, who died in 1325.
The maqam, located in New Delhi, is special to Sabsabibecause it’s “a space that transcends ethnicity” and the “viewer can observe Hindus, Christians, Sikhs and Muslims all entering the shrine to a receive a blessing”.
“What I saw there really captured my imagination. The beauty of this shrine is it doesn’t matter who you are,” Sabsabi says. “You’re there to receive a blessing and make a connection towards enlightenment. I think in the modern day we have forgotten that an enlightened being is an enlightened being in any faith.”
Like the scene projected on the computer screen, the garage space of Sabsabi’s Bonnyrigg home in Sydney’s west is cramped and hot, thanks in part to the 43C heat outside.
Although unintentional, the combination of scent, sight and sound plays on the senses, providing a surprising simulation of the context depicted on camera.
It’s this sense of transportation and the “universality of spirituality” that Sabsabi hopes to evoke among visitors to Bring the Silence on Cockatoo Island, where his vision will be projected on to five double-sided screens that “float in space”.
“They’ll be partly sculptural pieces and the two-sided viewing plays on this notion of multiple perspectives,” Sabsabi says. “What may be seen one way by one person will be viewed differently by another.”
While most of the screens will hang vertically, the fifth screen will be suspended horizontally, giving the viewer the opportunity to “overview or underview”, Sabsabi says. “I’ve hung it that way to give viewers the opportunity to either go under the screen and look up or look down on it.”
For Sabsabi, a central component of his oeuvre is “fostering an alternate perspective” and giving viewers “an opportunity to cross into another threshold or realm”. “It’s about finding the beauty in difference and seeing the beauty in the everyday.”
The shrine of Nizamuddin will be evoked through the use of vinyl mats, which will cover the exhibition floor. “The mats play on the idea of tradition,” Sabsabi says. “Mats are traditionally made out of straw, but we’ve made them from vinyl so there’s sort of a contradiction there.”
Scent serves as another anchor to the maqam. “People come in, offer rose petals or incense and receive a blessing like you can smell now,” Sabsabi says. “It’s here when you walk in, but you might not notice it unless I point it out to you. It’s playing on our senses and perspective, and deals with the multiple realities existing in the one environment, which is explored in Sufism.”
Bring the Silence is intended to be experienced in a counterclockwise configuration, a subtle nod to the whirling dervishes. “When you’re moving counterclockwise you actually levitate,” Sabasi says. But audiences are free to view it as they please.
Light is also “very important”, and while the room will intentionally be unlit, Sabsabi expects some sunlight to filter through cracks in the walls of the corrugated-iron exhibition space. He also points to areas of lens flare on screens one to four that “speak to the metaphysical”.
The idea for Bring the Silence came to Sabsabi about four years ago and, despite originally thinking he would pick “the home of the Chishti” in Rajasthan, after visiting the maqam in New Delhi he instinctively knew he had found his place. “I had an undeniable connection to it.”
Being granted access to film a site visited by people who travel vast distances to make an offering was “especially important” for Sabsabi in “the current climate of global turmoil”.
“Sacred shrines around the world are being destroyed, with the intention of erasing history to control the future,” Sabsabi says. “The maqam custodians believed it important for people to witness the existence of a space that promotes cultural and spiritual harmony and understanding. They want people to visit, to break down stereotypes through an appreciation and a recognition of others.” The calmness to the devotees’ movement depicted on screen belies the fact that “some people actively avoid this place”, he says. “They feel it could be threatening or subjected to violence or terrorism. But to me it’s quite the opposite.”
For this reason, Bring the Silence is as much about providing a window to another world as it is about resistance and learning. The silent cameras also enter a room previously accessible only to men. “I think it’s about a cultural shift,” Sabsabi says. “It’s the first time women will be experiencing the shrine — not from outside or the doorway.”
With its multiple references to Sufism, a practice Sabsabi became interested in “16 or 17 years ago”, Bring the Silence uniquely suits the theme of this year’s biennale, titled Superposition: Art of Equilibrium and Engagement.
A quantum physics term, superposition refers to the ability of electrons to occupy multiple states at once, which Sabasi says “fits perfectly” with his exploration of spirituality.
“Having someone like Mami is great,” Sabsabi says. “Her theme, the idea, superposition, and this idea of elements of realities, or alternatives, is fantastic. Bring the Silence is the right work for it and I’m confident my work will be reflected in her vision.”
Sabsabi says he is proud to credit western Sydney as an inspiration for his work.
“I want to create a sense of connectedness and universality,” Sabsabi says. “I hope to bring a taste of western Sydney’s multicultural identity and diversity to Cockatoo Island as a gentle reminder of how we can renegotiate and reclaim aspects of tradition and spirituality.”
“I invited you here today because I live in Sydney’s ‘temple city’, where we have seven temples plus a couple of churches and mosques,” Sabsabi says.
“We don’t have saints here in Bonnyrigg, but, who knows, one day we might.”
Bring the Silence is part of the Sydney Biennale, which runs at various locations until June 11.