Fanâ’ (فناء) is the Sufi concept of annihilation or dissolution (of the ego) that is also known as “death before dying”.
While making studies for this piece, I realized that if I stripped the letters down to their simplest possible expression, each one was exactly half the one preceding it, so that the word acted out what it spelled out (shown in the animation below). This astonishing discovery became the basis of my design, which both rotates like a vortex and is “dissolved” into black.
Creation process:
A mask cut into acetate was used to rub the pigment on the pattern with the sponge seen at the top.
