Ninth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

With the emergence of Islam as a new religion in 7th century A.C., there have been some new rules and regulation on visual representations. In the first decades of the rise of Islam, there was a strong prohibition in regard to representation of natural objects in countries within the Islamic territory. This limited the kind of subjects that could be painted or represented in other forms of visual arts. At the same time, there was a need for some form of art that could visually represent the word of God and also be used as ornamentation to decorate their sacred buildings. To fill this gap, people chose to “enhance” their written language, starting with the words of God recorded in the Quran and so script and calligraphic styles came to be used as a form of imagery. This paper explores the visual representation of text as an image in Islamic countries and how this role is being influenced through Western cultures and ideologies and new communication technologies. The focus will be on the architectural and urban spaces by comparing examples of architectural calligraphy and graffiti to explore how the visual role of the text has been shifted from celebrating the word of God, to expresses the human thoughts and feelings.