Les poèmes de Djaykoûr

Description:

Nja Mahdaoui, the great Tunisian calligraphic modern artist, is the illustrator for this artistic edition of French translations of poems by the Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. Long interested in the complex visual structure of language, including the arbitrary nature of graphemes as signs, Mahdaoui has stated that he tries to prevent viewers from “relying on the reassuring meaning” of legible words in favor of more intuitive experience. Here, he delivers a strikingly elegant, abstract composition of calligraphed lines that spell nothing in any language.

Attribution:

Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, Nja Mahdaoui

Date:

2000

Source:

UC Berkeley Library collection