Mashaq

Calligraphy, in essence, means the art of writing beautifully. The Arabic script’s calligraphic heritage, alongside the Arabic language’s oral origins, draws an essential rule for familiarity in drawing the Arabic letterforms. In this piece, Mohamed Gaber challenges the role of memory in decoding the complexity of the letterforms featuring Sufi poems by Rabaa Al-Adawiya and Hafez Al-Shirazi, which speak on alienation and missing.

Mashaq results from an ongoing research project, “The Type Platform – منصة الحروف”, studying the evolution of Arabic letterforms through their history of existence under the influences of changing technologies.

(Mashaq – مَشَقَ) in the heritage of Arabic calligraphy is the visual manifesto the master calligrapher passes on to his students, who follow his path in mastering precision when illustrating the letterforms.