Gateways transposes a personal life journey into an abstract, symbolic experience of progressing through stations of pure colour. The Arabic word bāb (its plural abwāb featuring in the cover) means both “gate” and “chapter”, a double meaning made literal as the passage from one chapter to the next is here marked by going through a gate.
Each gate, built up with layers of paper, is deeper than the previous, so that in total the 11 gates/chapters are made up of exactly 100 hand-cut sheets. Each design is derived from a real doorway I have come across over the years.
Why 11 gates?
Ten is a number of completion. The first ten chapters constitute the part of the story that is over, while the eleventh marks a whole new beginning.
Hence the book begins and ends with a circle, but this isn’t a return to square one, as there has meanwhile been a progression from deep black, through browns made of literal mud, through increasingly clear and ethereal colours, to finally reach the unearthly blue of my finest lapis lazuli.
Chapter titles are included as diamond-shaped Square Kufi medallions, in the place they often occupy in historical examples. They’re not intended to be read—though the perseverant may be able to decipher them—but their presence encourages the reader to imagine their own sequence of words for the elusive inscriptions. (The translations are listed at the very bottom of this post, to avoid spoilers).
Though I finished all the pages three months prior, the books were set aside for a full term while I was away completing a Visiting Research Fellowship at Oxford University. The day I finally finished binding them and attaching the covers happened to be 13 January 2025: the twelfth anniversary of my moving to London. A somewhat eerie, but auspicious, coincidence.
Chapter titles: Bāb of Fear – Bāb of Pain – Bāb of Anger – Bāb of Exile – Bāb of Ego – Bāb of Confusion – Bāb of Patience – Bāb of Humility – Bāb of Trust – Bāb of Gratitude – Bāb of Love
My thoughts about the symbolisms of this work, like the gates, are getting deeper by the moment. It resonates in me as a continuous, expanding harmony. Like an eleventh gate! Inspired. Inspiring. (And because I just reread your post on lapis lazuli last week, the embodied dimension of the pigment making is also in that awareness.)
Thank you Jana!
Fascinating and magnificent!!! <3
Thank you!
Beautiful, inspiring looking at your works. It’s a new dimension of spirital development .I’m really overjoyed to be learning Manuscript Kufi with you at Domestika..
Thank you very much!