Aya Musa

Precisely because the rituals, banners and other forms of commemoration are among the most recognisable expressions of Shia religious culture, the people and communities who take part in them have often become targets of violence. The project emphasises the strength of these forms of remembrance and their ability to hold a community together. 

The project brings together four strands. Aasmaandaar (bearer of the heavens) shows the final starry nights of fourteen saints within the Shia tradition. These are the nights on which they looked up at the sky for the last time before they died, often through murder. Here, the night sky becomes a place of stillness, expectation and surrender. 

Azadaar (the mourner) focuses on the mourning body. Hands strike the chest, bodies move in the same rhythm, faces disappear into half-darkness. Through the body, a path opens for believers towards the sublime: towards something greater than individual sorrow. 

Allamdaar (the standard-bearer) shifts attention to the material culture of remembrance: banners, fabrics, beads, calligraphy and ritual objects that are carried, touched and kept. What carries memory thus also becomes visible as a sign of connection and resistance against forgetting. 

Wafadaar (the faithful) brings religious history into the present. The cemeteries in Pakistan show people who have died as a result of sectarian violence, members of Musa’s own community. They demonstrate that this old history of persecution still has an effect today. 

Because the rituals were largely photographed in Europe and the graves in Pakistan, Azadaar connects people in the diaspora with their place of origin. In this way, Musa brings together four strands — cosmos, body, object and grave — in an installation about grief, care and survival.