Rumi

Çakar’s work on paper, *Rumi *(2016), replicates the Islamic Art motif called Rumi, which was ones an animal figure turned into a simplified motif so as to follow Islamic laws in art, ideas which made firm to avoid figurative representations. She nods to the transformation and dispossession of the motif from its animal form due to religion. The affect of religion on something so benign as an animal motif brings to bear the many natural things made necessarily hidden and dispossessed because of religious sanctities. The artist further comments on this by drawing an upside down mosque, specifically and pointedly that which is the burial ground and shrine of Mevlana Rumi. Today lovers of Rumi’s writings can go there, and ironically, can even buy plastic replicas of him or the mosque.
 Nicole O’Rourke
, 2016