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![](/web/20061029120438im_/http://www.civilization.ca/cultur/cespays/images/pay1_15p1.jpg)
Download
a QuickTime VR movie of the exhibition
(Photo: Harry Foster © Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation)
"- I chose to create furniture that bridges the gap between my Islamic
carpet and my computer table.
- You can do anything with the Arabic language ... make it sing, make it
jump. You can even make it dance.
- I mixed together different alphabets-Arabic, Chinese, Latin, Cyrillic ...
as if they belonged to a single language.
- I needed time to remember and time to forget ... "
Whether inspired by the philosophy of Islamic art or by popular Arab
culture, whether appropriating the traces of a luminous past or seeking
to innovate, whether meditating on meaning or making words and colours
dance for pure pleasure, these artists are forever mixing together
influences, setting them in dialogue with each other, building bridges
and creating links-links between the past and the present; connections
among peoples, civilizations and cultures; bonds among ourselves ... we
of yesterday, we of today, we who cross boundaries.
If the artist dialogues with tradition, he or she also and above all
dialogues with our imagination, for the moment of a silence, the moment
of a gaze, the moment in which mazag (pleasure) suddenly appears.
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