20 Letters

Medium: Black and white photographic film, resin, maple board
Dimensions: 10” X 10” X 3” each
Year: 2016

Representing what is interwoven and concealed in their daily lives, 20 Letters is a visual manifestation of the short essays written by 20 women about the hardships that they face due to their Muslim identity. For this work, progressive voices of gay, straight, black, white and brown Muslim women from the United States put their personal stories to paper.

In 20 Letters, a sequence of 20 small mixed-media work meticulously created out of photographic film, maple board and resin draw upon Bayar’s exploration of text and calligraphic abstraction. The meditative repetition of the photographic film forms responds to the Islamic tradition of the spirituality of text as well as Islamic manuscript painting. This repetition also lends an almost performative aspect to the works, while the intimate size creates the feeling of an intensely personal interaction with the work.

Bayar photographed and recorded these stories on black and white photographic film then laid them out on maple boards in patterns reminiscent of Ebru, the Turkish marbling technique developed in 15th century, and Middle Eastern calligraphy. Scrolled films half hide, half reveal these women’s stories by keeping them anonymous, echoing their state of mind between confrontation and silence. In this body of work, Bayar creates a poetic dialog between the traditional and the experimental, embracing a conscious nod to the past while employing contemporary trends of art for social action.