The London Magazine
Esen Kaya on Making Paradise at The Aga Khan Centre Gallery
Making Paradise, a group exhibition currently on view on at The Aga Khan Centre Gallery, explores the concept of Eden through art and Islamic Garden design. A rich range of artworks is on display here from traditional ceramic work, gold embroidery, hand-stitched textiles, collage and modern applique techniques, alongside digital reproductions of classical miniature paintings from the Aga Khan Museum’s permanent collection. Along with the visual, the show stimulates other senses including smell and sounds and is divided into four symbolic quadrants. The London Magazine spoke with the gallery’s Curator, Esen Kaya, who was able to give us a deeper insight into this stunning exhibition and the featured works by twenty two internationally renowned artists.
Installation View, Making Paradise, 2021, Aga Khan Centre Gallery. Photo by Jonathan Goldberg. Courtesy of the Aga Khan Centre Gallery.
Can you tell us what led you to want to explore the concept of Eden through art and Islamic Garden Design?
I wanted to curate an exhibition about Paradise. The very word itself fills us with joy. It conjures imaginings of an incredible place that we all inspired by and aspire to be in. All faiths and spiritual beliefs have one thing in common – the concept of Paradise / Eden is an ideal that drives the ultimate place we all want to be in. I wanted to curate this exhibition for a number of reasons.
Primarily, I wanted to create a multi-sensory exhibition that brought together a confluence of ideas and approaches around the concept. I wanted to connect the Gallery to the Islamic Gardens we have at Aga Khan Centre and through this, explore the architectural components of Islamic Garden Design, the universal messages around pluralism, and the key references of Paradise mentioned in the Qu’ran.
I also wanted to create an exhibition that brought together artwork from both the East and West, as well as purposefully mixing contemporary art with historical art. This is why I wanted to collaborate with Aga Khan Museum and the Royal Horticultural Society Lindley Library – as a way of showing works from their collections in a very different context. I wanted to show all the key elements of Islamic art in the exhibition too, which include Islamic geometry, calligraphy and miniature painting.
Messages around pluralism, biodiversity and audience development also played a key role in my thinking behind the show. Exhibitions come to life when people engage with them, so I wanted to ensure this exhibition appealed to a really broad audience – there were many ideas that I wanted to achieve.
It became increasingly important to realise this exhibition, given the global pandemic and the national lockdowns we were all experiencing. It not only supported the work of many artists, commissioning them to make new work thus supporting their practice, but also enabled us to work with a range of partner organisations we may not have otherwise. It was also timely because of the opening of Jellico Gardens, which is a paradise garden designed by landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith, commissioned jointly by AKDN and Argent. I felt there was a real opportunity to connect the gardens in our building to the gallery and the gallery’s exhibition to connect to Jellico Gardens, enabling broad audiences to enjoy all these spaces.
Installation View, Making Paradise, 2021, Aga Khan Centre Gallery. Photo by Jonathan Goldberg. Courtesy of the Aga Khan Centre Gallery.
How do the pieces from the Aga Khan Museum’s permanent collection sit with the other artists you have selected?
The works I have selected from Aga Khan Museum’s permanent collection depict historical scenes of garden spaces and how they were used for recreational, pleasure and spiritual purposes. In particular, these traditional miniature paintings illustrate representations of the classic elements within Islamic garden design; the ‘Chahar Bagh’ design, and the key elements as mentioned in the Qu’ran in relation to paradise that includes Water and Shade, Enclosure and the colour Green, Trees, fruit, flowers, scent and bird-song, Divine Unity and Peace and Contemplation.
These works have been displayed alongside botanical illustrations from the Royal Horticultural Society Lindley Library collection of specific trees, flowers and fruit mentioned in the Qu’ran in relation to paradise and more contemporary artworks based on the themes within the exhibition. Unlike most gallery shows, there is a play of symmetry in this exhibition, purposefully telling a story and the gallery walls as if they were the floral beds typically seen in a garden.
Installation View, Making Paradise, 2021, Aga Khan Centre Gallery. Photo by Jonathan Goldberg. Courtesy of the Aga Khan Centre Gallery.
What is the significance of the garden to the AKDN and its partners?
The creation of parks and gardens has been an important part of AKDN’s work, with the objective of using green spaces to catalyse positive economic, social and cultural change, as well as expressing ethical notions of stewardship, ecology, and the presence of beauty in the built environment. Gardens bring people of different backgrounds together to enjoy and appreciate nature. They also seek to improve people’s quality of life by providing spaces for reflection, spirituality, education and leisure.
At the heart of the exhibition’s narrative is the presentation of AKDN’s garden film made in 2018 depicting the many garden restoration and development projects achieved by the Aga Khan Development Network around the world. Crucially, the film conveys His Highness the Aga Khan’s message about the significance of gardens as important spaces that build bridges, bring communities together and act as catalysts for change, particularly in this time of growing nationalism and migration of cultures and identities. The inclusion of this film is to share AKDN’s incredible global portfolio while how nature is a gift of God and humankind is responsible for its preservation.
Installation View, Making Paradise, 2021, Aga Khan Centre Gallery. Photo by Jonathan Goldberg. Courtesy of the Aga Khan Centre Gallery.
How does the exhibition take a wider view of the significance of gardens as embodiments of paradise in Islam?
The following quote from His Highness the Aga Khan IV greets visitors as they enter the gallery. I wanted this beautiful quote which encapsulates the ethos of AKDN to be a statement that speaks of why garden spaces are so important.
The garden has for many centuries served as a central element in Muslim culture. The Holy Qur’an portrays the garden as a central symbol of a spiritual ideal — a place where human creativity and Divine majesty are fused, where the ingenuity of humanity and the beauty of nature are productively connected. Gardens are a place where the ephemeral meets the eternal, and where the eternal meets the hand of man.
For many Muslims, gardens reflect the bounty of God and the blessings of life. Through the long history of Islam, there has been an outpouring of poetry and art that engages with spiritual topics, including gardens, which are seen as an embodiment of paradise, both earthly and heavenly. So too, a great deal of poetry, art and literature has been created that presents gardens as secular realms of social intercourse, pleasure, romance and diplomacy, as well as a retreat from the hardships of work, conflict and a harsh environment.
One universal element that finds multiple expressions in this earthly paradise is water; an essential ingredient found in virtually all of the gardens of the Islamic world.
The statement that ‘Water is the gift of God to man and the earth’ can be found in the Qur’an. In Islamic culture, originally an agricultural society, a significant amount of technology and law was devoted to water. Various different artistic devices have been produced to exploit water’s many changeable characteristics of movement, sound, reflection and refraction; channels, falls, basins, pools, lakes and the like are among the glories of this rich and diverse heritage. The use of water features as a significant element in all of AKDN’s rehabilitation of historic gardens.
All Islamic gardens on earth are, to a certain extent, both a foretaste and a mirror of the Paradise gardens as described in the Qur’an, the ‘Jannah Al-Firdaus, ‘Jannah’ meaning ‘garden’, and ‘Firdaus’ meaning ‘paradise’.
The ‘Making Paradise’ exhibition is clearly not an attempt to recreate a literal Islamic Paradise Garden since it is installed in the heart of the Centre where there is no natural light or running water. Rather, the exhibition’s aim is to give a little taste (‘dhawq’ in Sufism, the inward dimension of Islam) of the celestial garden through an exhibition of artworks hung on the walls around a central conceptual fountain with a floral ‘waterfall’. The artworks on display are created from a variety of media and are all inspired by different aspects of the Gardens of Paradise.
Installation View, Making Paradise, 2021, Aga Khan Centre Gallery. Photo by Jonathan Goldberg. Courtesy of the Aga Khan Centre Gallery.
The central focus will be a silent fountain by renowned Islamic garden designer Emma Clark – can you tell us more about this work?
When I was planning the exhibition, one of the key features I wanted was a fountain. I invited Emma Clark to work with me to design the fountain and act as a consultant, given her expertise and successful career designing many Islamic gardens around the world. Her most recent Islamic garden is the exquisite garden at Cambridge Eco Mosque which opened in autumn 2019.
I presented Emma with a specific brief as I had a clear vision in mind – something that was more of a sculptural object than a functional artefact. The silent fountain refers to the poetic translation of water and in this case, in the form of papercut strands of organic life form by installation artist Clare Celeste Borsch.
This idea also stems from my love of Tord Bootnje’s work. Since discovering his work many years ago, I have curated numerous exhibitions that have a thread of connection to his playful interpretations of organic life form, so I do owe gratitude to him for inspiring me.
Installation View, Making Paradise, 2021, Aga Khan Centre Gallery. Photo by Jonathan Goldberg. Courtesy of the Aga Khan Centre Gallery.
All the senses seem to be covered, is the show intended as a multisensory experience?
In order to inspire thoughts around paradise, I wanted to create a multi-sensory exhibition, so visitors would be greeted by an array of visual stimuli as well as a perfume ecosphere and sweet birdsong that may evoke a sense of delight and wonder and perhaps imaginings of paradise and the lusciousness this may have to offer. The exhibition includes artworks that depict a variety of herbs and flowers in different ways, so I felt it was important to include a scent so that the ephemeral scent of these aromatic plants could be experienced too. The soundscape, or rather ‘soundwalk” as Geoff Sample suggests, comes from the same thought process I had – a need to bring to life, the echoes of the sound of water, of crickets in the distance, of breeze near you and of bird song declaring the glory of life from in the natural world. The only sense we were not able to achieve was the sense of touch, and this is namely due to covid.
Any further highlights you wish to share, were there any surprises along the way?
With the sudden reality of the global pandemic and the direct impact this had on all sectors meant there would need to be considerable changes to how this exhibition would be realized. The lockdown caused considerable delays in the production of the fountain, as the fabricators for the fountain bowl were busy making PPE for the NHS. We had numerous attempts to install the exhibition but Covid seemed to be playing with our aims, and its ripple impact across the entire project was sharply felt. However, we were all very passionate about this and I was determined to keep my focus and intention and strive to achieve as beautiful an exhibition as possible.
Under normal circumstances, curators visit artists studios as a way of developing that creative dialogue and exchange, but due to Covid, this was not possible. The only artist I was able to visit in her studio was Rachel Dein, just before the second lockdown, and spoke through the two commissions for the show and the selection of six small pieces that were already available. I had to work remotely with all artists and partners, which in itself was a challenge at times – the design, production and installation of the papercut strands for the fountain were all undertaken remotely.
The flower wall at the entrance of the gallery by Olga Prinku was also subject to considerable change. My initial thoughts were around having an interactive wall, so visitors would be invited to install a flower during their visit, and the wall would slowly emerge through audience engagement. As a result of Covid, this could no longer happen. Olga and I had to rethink our approach, so I designed the panels instead.
Installation View, Making Paradise, 2021, Aga Khan Centre Gallery. Photo by Jonathan Goldberg. Courtesy of the Aga Khan Centre Gallery.
What can the public view now?
The public can book a free ticket via our website to visit the exhibition until 21 June when lockdown ends. After this date, the gallery will be open Monday – Saturday 10am – 6pm.
For more information about the exhibition, visit the Aga Khan Centre’s website.
‘Making Paradise’ is open to the public by appointment only from 29 April until 30 September 2021. Tickets available via Eventbrite here.
Aga Khan Centre Gallery
10 Handyside Street
London
N1C 4DN
To watch the ‘Making Paradise’ film, click here.
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