MARYAM AK - PHOTOGRAPHER/RESEARCHER
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FERTILE: HONOUR THE DATE PALM - THE GRAMOUNCE خصيب
In her ongoing project, ‘Honour the Date Palm’, Maryam al-Khasawneh profoundly engages with the date palm tree's symbolic and spiritual significance in Arab and Islamic traditions. Often understood as a symbol of fertility and abundance, the palm tree is frequently presented in animalistic terms as a living, breathing being, very similar in form to humans.
For Hyperthyme,A group Show held as part of the Alternative MA degree on Food and Art with the Gramounce, the artist developed an installation in which a fertility sculpture created with dates was placed at the centre of an intimate space outlined by a hanging textile work, made to look like a tent. The solid female figure moulded out of food was presented as an icon to be honoured by the public in contemplation. If the visitors offered their prayer, they could eat from the sculpture (an act reflecting how pre-Islamic worshippers regularly ate their idols).
Through its evolving iterations, ‘Honour the Date Palm’ looks into embodiment, storytelling and food relationships. al-Khasawneh's research reflects on the dynamics of interdependence between date palms, soil and the human body, a three-way relationship that entails care, healing and abundance. The title is derived from a quote by the Prophet Mohammad, who encouraged worshippers to "honour the palm, which is your paternal aunt" (as "it was made from the remains of the earth out of which Adam was created"). In invoking examples from mythological stories from Arabia that focus on notions of love and solidarity between humans and non-humans, the artist invites viewers to refuse extractivist power dynamics and to embrace renewed relationships of symbiosis, co-dependence and mutual reverence.
The project is ongoing and is intended to take different iterations. By deriving inspiration from medieval Arabic texts, artworks (miniatures) and mythologies, the project seeks to forumlate innovative ways to (re)consider the place of humans in relation to nature and the divine within the context of Islamic and Arab culture.
Often referred to as 'the tree of life',date-palms, have tradionally been percrieved in humanist terms, as either male or female, with the latter bearing the sought-after dates, a source of nutrition and energy in the arid deserts of Arabia.
In the prophetic tradition, the Prophet Muhammad is purported to have said,
“The date-palm bears a striking resemblance to Man, in the beauty of its erect and lofty stature, its division into two distinct sexes, male and female, and the property, which is peculiar to it of being fecundated by a sort of copulation.If its head is cut off, it dies. Its [male or pollen-bearing] flowers have an extraordinary spermatic odor, and are enclosed in a case similar to the sac in which the fetus is contained”.
By continuing to meditiate on this interspecies relationship, the project will thus seek to continue to speculate on ways to reconsider planetary ethics and ecologies from an Islamic perspective, by referring specifically to the concepts of justice, balance, and harmony between human and nature - focusing here on the sentient essence within the natural world and a sensitivity that is not exclusively designated for humans but is rather part of an entangled sense of empathy, which recognises the emotional existence of non-human entities.