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After "Mohammed and the good Muslims"

Artist Shahpour Pouyan (Iranian, born 1979; lives and works in New York)

Date2017

MediumArchival print on Japanese paper with hand-applied opaque watercolors and gold

DimensionsImage: 16 × 12 inches (40.6 × 30.5 cm);
Frame: 20 7/8 × 18 1/2 × 1 inches (53 × 47 × 2.5 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineAcquired through the George and Mary Rockwell Fund

Terms

Paintings
Opaque watercolor and gold
Japanese paper
Iranian

Object number2018.004.001

Label CopyThe subject of Shahpour Pouyan’s art is, in his words, “glorifying human advancement by hybridizing what I consider the ‘residues’ of empires.” One of his approaches has been to faithfully reproduce illustrated manuscripts in every detail except for the human figures, which are removed, transforming the images into simple architectural scenes. Here he reproduces a page from a fifteenth-century Turkic Miraj-nama in the collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, that tells the story of the prophet Mohammed’s journey through seven stages of heaven. The original page from the manuscript shows Mohammed with a group of pious Muslims. At the time that the original manuscript was produced the prophet was shown without a covering over his face, as was the tradition before religious restrictions against showing his visage were enacted.

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