a way to see and be seen

“A WAY TO SEE, A WAY TO BE SEEN”

“Through the depths of silence,
I found you.
Piercing eyes
A window to wonderland.
Were you there from the beginning of time?
Was I lost?
Did you save me from my own illusions?
The silence painted itself into a trajectory of echoes;
Where do they take me?
Who is in?
Are you there?
Here I am.”

“A way to see; a way to be seen” is a part blindfolded experiment evoking sensations of wandering within, trying to remember, the essence of the encounter and recognition of “the other.” 12 participants are hand-picked each time, invited to “the looking glass” and into their own looking glass. They are asked to bring an object/offering that is something they use to “see into the other.” Poetry is recited with varying intonations by performer Rossella Cecili, and at the end of the one hour guided session, blindfolds are removed, and a collective reveal emerges.

The poems are part of an earlier work called ““The Labyrinth of Mirrors” exhibited in Sharjah Arts Museum where Samina created a landscape of wandering with 6 x two-way plexi glass mirrored panels 1m x 2.4m, sandblasted with geometric patterns. Viewers explored their own reflections through a series of optical illusions, first seeing their own reflection and then seeing through and finding the other. “The way to see; the way to be seen” continues to explore how we see reflections within and through the eye of the other, connecting to Sufi principles of the two axis: longitudinal - our personal connection with the earth and the Divine, and latitudinal -our connection to humanity. The poems were written as an expression of these two axis.

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