TayoBlog

Hasan and Hussein Essop continued to take their brilliant photographs to the world, playing with themselves as twins to project the challenges and opportunities of Muslim identity. Their work was clearly rooted in the Cape Flats, but with a significance far beyond.

At an ongoing exhibition in Hamburg, Gordon Mitchell introduced them to an interesting group in the city on Friday (20/11/09). At the opening, about 50-60 people packed a small gallery that would stay open for 8 days. It was a very mixed group, all concerned in one way or another with culture in the city. There were a few Muslims, but most are art and culture workers interested in how culture functioned, giving meaning and identity in this increasingly multicultural city.

Talking to the Essops about their work, I found it interesting how they represent their work as a tension between self and other. More interestingly, they focus on the tension between Islam and the West. They found the West attractive, mentioning its modernity, designer labels and amenities. They were afraid, however, of losing their culture, and felt that they had to hold on to it. And they inserted their own experiences and upbringing in their art. Art provided a medium to express and explore this tension.

The articulation of identity between attraction and fear reminded me of a definition of religion (din) that I have come across in al-Mawardi (d. 1058), a political theorist who lived in Iraq close to a thousand years ago. For al-Mawardi, the attraction of heaven and the fear of hell were the cornerstones of the art (adab) of religion.

I was not really impressed with this characterization as I was looking for something deeper. However, when I heard the Essops mention their attraction and fear on more than one occasion, it seems worthwhile to make a connection. These primal sentiments could not be ignored at the heart of religion.

What was striking, however, were the objects of fear and attraction. I doubt very much that heaven and hell have been replaced respectively by the West and Islam. And yet, this new binary (West and culture/Islam) has overlaid the older one in an interesting and complex way.

The West was indeed the heaven on earth, even in its own projection as the most advanced and most prosperous nations of the world. And such attractions were not to scoff at.

Fear of losing one's culture seems to lie at the heart of the recent turn to Islam. The fear of hell fire was also there, but the fear for one's culture seems like a driving force. It gathered people against the attractions that were so tantalizing.

Playing with fear and attraction, we quickly noticed how the two can quickly change sides. The West could also repel (an inverse of attraction), and culture/Islam could be attractive. Or the two could be combined in a confusion of emotions.

Heaven and Hell, kept out of this world, were represented in their purity by al-Mawardi. The emotions were neatly separated. But the primal emotions of attraction and fear were not so easily marshalled into categories. And as modern religion appears to have brought them to earth, they were not so easily managed. 

Al-Mawardi was probably right about the art of din in his time. The art of life, however, was more difficult. The art of the Essops stares this difficulty in the face.