Just before Christmas, I had the chance to visit the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. I went on a bit of a museum binge during that trip, and after a while all the artifacts started to grow kind of...well, old. But the cool thing about museums is that there's always a chance that, amidst the pot fragments and paintings of barely-clothed maidens in mid-gasp, you might come across something completely new.
So after I got over the giant red Christmas tree in the foyer, I entered V&A's Jameel Gallery for Islamic art and was pretty much blown away by everything in there. First of all, a lot of Islamic art plays with calligraphy and the Arabic language, which is right up my alley. Each piece was like, "hey, what if..." and my brain would explode, and then I'd do the Museum Two-Step to the next piece, and it'd be like, "hey what if..." Basically, the artists were unafraid to question and transform centuries-old traditions into something fresh.
I finally came across one of the exhibits online, so I can now stop referring to it as the "weird rug exhibit."
Artist Faig Ahmed models his carpets after traditional Azerbaijan carpets, but distorts them in a way that doesn't so much break from tradition as pull it in new directions. In person they are even more impressive, as you can see the point where the warps begin, the exact thread where tradition turns left instead of right. It's pretty cool.
*And yes, I am just saying this because it's carpets and vaguely Arabian.
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