Children of Rumis Vision of Love and Peace Number 1

by Aberjhani

Title

Children of Rumis Vision of Love and Peace Number 1

Artist

Aberjhani

Medium

Digital Art - Fine Art Digital Painting + Silk-featherbrush Artstyle

Description

Children of Rumi’s Vision of Love and Peace Number 1

It’s probably a safe bet that images of the fall of Kabul in Afghanistan will be among the most republished and televised when journalists revisit the year’s biggest stories near the end of 2021. A lot of mixed emotions left me as stunned as anyone else viewing a very bad end to a very sad war. My first responses on social media were mostly critical of the strategic failings of Afghan and U.S. political leaders. Then I found myself thinking less about government failures and more about the children of Afghanistan.

Young Afghan students were routinely taught to memorize and recite poems by the globally-celebrated poet known in the West as RUMI (more formally: Jalal al-Din Mohammad Balkhi). To escape restrictions on personal liberties imposed by the Taliban, many of these children have now become members of an Afghan diaspora scattered around the world.

I wanted to capture the children’s experience of displacement combined with their cultivated passion for Rumi’s teachings on love, peace, and compassion through a series of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle paintings, poetry, and articles. The images which began to emerge as I experimented with different formats, like the one seen here, surprised me in different ways. To me, they communicated the kind of longing to overcome barriers to unity expressed in a lot of Rumi’s poetry.

In some images, a larger glowing Featherbot figure is separated from smaller clusters of Featherbots by boldly colored fences or walls. The colors mauve, electric blue, forest green, yellow, and indigo, stand in strong contrast to dark violet, silver, purple, black, and orange. Determination and uncertainty find themselves in opposition. The impulse to communicate all of this through art is itself a call for nonviolent conflict resolution.
Anyone interested in checking out my article about the possible impact of the Taliban on Rumi’s hometown of Balkh can do that here:

https://www.author-poet-aberjhani.info/blog-visionary-vibes/reading-rumi-after-911-and-again-at-the-end-of-the-war-in-afghanistan-part-1

For recent art exhibit news: https://fineartamerica.com/pressreleases/saa-and-faa-artist-tackles-climate-change-in-new-airport-art-exhibit.html

Thank you for visiting.

Aberjhani
Harlem Renaissance Centennial
© Oct 2021

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October 15th, 2021

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