Arabesque Thresholds : Artwork 7

Islamic geometric art, almost without exception, is organised around bilateral or radial symmetry — a formal preference that is not aesthetic convention but cosmological conviction: the universe is ordered, and the art that reflects it should be ordered in the same way. The departure from that symmetry here is therefore significant. What has been made is a Muqarnas composition that looks as if it has been caught in the act of becoming — the pattern still unfolding, still mid-generation, the growth not yet arrived at its final form. This is unusual in the tradition and deeply expressive: most Islamic geometric art depicts the finished state of the universe; this one depicts the universe in the process of constructing itself.