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Le Chemin de Roses, 2001
Mixed media installation. Embroidered silk banners, steel sculptures, ceramic basins

Paris-based Algerian artist Rachid Koraïchi's nonpareil mastery of calligraphy can be seen in »Le Chemin de Roses«, in which he evokes the idea of »safar« or travel and transcendence in Islamic Sufi thought by recalling the trip of the traveller and scholar Jalal al-Din al-Rumi across the Mediterranean to Qonya, Turkey, where legend has it that he met Ibn Arabi, the great Sufi mystic and poet. Koraïchi's installation iconizes al-Rumi's journey across continents through Turkish ceramic ablution basins, Moroccan gold linen, and metal, highlighting the rich encounter between two Sufi masters and three continents, as well as al-Rumi's idea of the inseparability of aesthetics and metaphysics, where art unites with the divine.

(From the press information)