Salah at Whitworth Art Gallery

Salah was acquired by Whitworth Art Gallery, part of The University of Manchester in June 2022. It is currently on display in the Main Gallery.

Salah is about how the sky is integral to my faith and beliefs as a Muslim. The five daily prayers are obligatory (fard) and are performed at times determined essentially by the position of the sun in the sky ordained by Allah swt. That’s why salat (prayer) times vary at different locations on the Earth. To produce this piece I used a process of photographing the sky in the same spot outside my home and digitally printed these onto fabric and pieced them together, capturing moments in time that are lost everyday. Culture constantly evolves and through using geometric shapes in traditional English paper piecing, I am interested in how that influences what we consider as ‘Islamic’ art. As I was born in Lahore, Pakistan but lived all of my life in Manchester since the age of two years old, I have used beads acquired from my last trip to Pakistan in contemporary ways, piecing part of my memories of Lahore into Manchester’s landscapes.