Megan will be joining us Sunday, September 30 at 10:30am to converse about her ArtPrize piece.

“and the Word Became Flesh”

After watching a documentary on Islamic Art, I was inspired by a particular line that said in Islam the most important gift from God is His Word and thus text is one of the most prominent art forms in Islamic Art. On the other hand, for Christians, God’s most precious gift is His Son, and thus figures are at the center of Christian imagery. Blending these ideas together, I thought of the beginning of John’s Gospel which synthesizes these ideas into “In the beginning was the Word… and the Word was God… and the Word became flesh”. These lines, Jn 1:1 and Jn 1:14, are the first and second layers of Arabic text in the piece respectively. Taking these verses as a starting point I explored to find more Biblical texts that discussed the Word and ended up adding text from Luke (11:28) and James (1:22) from the New Testament and Deuteronomy (30:14) and Psalms (119:130) from the Old Testament in the final layer.