Perle Magazine - Spring 2018 Perle Magazine - Spring 2018 | Page 32

I have lived and worked in Andalusia
for over 20 years and now divide my
time between Europe and the Middle
East. My artistic expression evolved
from my multicultural background, my
visual art and interior design studies in
Florence, my diverse linguistic studies,
and the heritage of the places I have
lived in. The legacy of the ancient
trade routes, the cultural sub layering
between East and West, and the
enormous contribution to humanity of
Al-Andalus inspired me to reference
its inclusive values as a way to work
against stereotypes and violence.
Deeply troubled by the tragedy of
September 11th, I decided to study
Arabic. This brought me to develop
a new artistic concept in which I pay
tribute and appropriate the Arabic
language and Islamic aesthetic
traditions — not to supplant but rather
to complement my own cultural and
religious background. In my search
for connecting to ‘the Middle Eastern
soul’ I reach out from one media into
another to recapture the dignity and
balance of Islamic culture, and explore
how the universal values of poetry
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can be used to resolve conflict and
address collective memories. In my work
process I meld the traditions of both
East and West: I reclaim the illuminated
manuscript for its association with the
notions of transience and permanence
and I attempt a new way of looking at
the connective powers of old Islamic
art forms and how they can relate to
contemporary communication in the
age of social networking. I reference my
themes by borrowing from architecture,
archaeology, geography and astronomy.
The undercurrent of my work is an
appeal to our common humanity and
shared universal human values. Through
my symbiotic artistic expression of
two entwined cultures, I hope to reach
beyond the socio-political divisions
of fundamentalism and islamophobia
and motivate a positive change in the
conception of ‘the other’ as culturally
or spiritually impermeable. In my works
I aim to appeal to the universal soul
of our human condition, that which is
within each of us and that transcends
time and geographical space.
- Elisabeth Bolza