.jpg)
Mercury on a Wednesday is a sound piece based on an old paper founded in the book ‘The Sun of a Great Knowledge’ by Al’ama Abi El-Abbas Al-Bony in the 13th century AD. Yara Mekawei‘s sonic bricolages draw inspiration from the dynamic flow of urban centres and the key infrastructure of cities.
Interested in the philosophy of architecture, social history, and philosophical literature, Mekawei's work is based on sound as an essential tool of vision.
The historical foundations of sorcery in Islam were built in three stages. Original Arabia provided the usual magical tools for protection, healing and divination which were integrated and legitimised by the Islamic institution. From the 9-10th centuries onwards, the introduction and domination of Hellenistic (Greco-Irano-Indian) esoteric thought have disrupted the general frameworks of magic intervention: astrological determinations had dominated in the conception and elaboration of talismanic practices.
Severely shaken by the Hellenistic offensive, Islam gradually reacted and as far as witchcraft was concerned, focused its efforts on the condemnation and elimination of the astrological framework and on its replacement by intrinsically Islamic elements. Conceptually, the notion of sihr (witchcraft), condemned religiously, is still an active activity because of a total lack of definition and delimitation.
Mercury on a Wednesday is curated by Julie Lillelien Porter in response to the exhibitions Poetics of Resistance by Marcelo Brodsky and Invisible by Joy at Kunsthall 3,14.