Aga Khan Masters and Tazeen Qayyum premiere groundbreaking Isma'u wa'u at the opening of Manzar

Doha, Qatar, 31 October 2024 - Live art and musical performance blended seamlessly during a pioneering world-premiere performance featuring painter and visual artist Tazeen Qayyum and the Aga Khan Master Musicians. Co-presented by the Art Mill Museum and the Aga Khan Music Programme, the performance was commissioned for the opening of Manzar, a groundbreaking exhibition celebrating art and architecture from Pakistan. It launches a new partnership between the Aga Khan Music Programme and Qatari cultural institutions.

Titled Isma'u wa'u, the performance brought together celebrated Pakistani/Canadian visual artist Tazeen Qayyum, and founding members of the Aga Khan Master Musicians collective Basel Rajoub and Feras Charestan, in an immersive presentation drawing on calligraphy, improvised music, trance and movement.

Isma'u wa'u took its title – which translates into English as “Listen and learn” – from a well-known Arabic idiom attributed to the seventh-century religious leader and writer Quss Ibn Sa’ida. Taking the saying as her starting point, Qayyum selected four key words that convey some of its key ideas: Sama (listen), Basr (see), Fehm (understand) and Dikr (remember). These are all terms with meanings and resonances across cultures, being spoken and understood in Urdu (Qayyum’s first language), Arabic and Farsi.

The exhibition and performance attracted a distinguished audience of eminent international figures, including the Emir of Qatar His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Her Excellency Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif.

Working outwards from the centre of a large canvas set on the floor, Qayyum inscribed the four words using intricate calligraphy, formed in concentric circles that radiated ever outwards, growing larger and more expansive as they continued. Qayyum’s writing almost became a kind of solo dance, and her intimate writing movements were mirrored by the similarly intricate movements of Basel Rajoub (saxophone) and Feras Charestan (qanun) on their respective instruments. It was at once a physically demanding test of endurance for both artist and musicians, and also a deeply emotional journey, a kind of philosophical pilgrimage into the profound concepts that Qayyum’s chosen words represent.

Basel Rajoub and Feras Charestan observed Qayyum’s writing and movements as part of their performance, and responded to them closely in the music they improvised jointly as a duo, drawing on the Middle Eastern traditions that they know so intimately. As was the case with Qayyum’s intricate calligraphy, their complex process of musical creation took place spontaneously, and as a collective improvisation with the visual artist, so that all three artists were united in the observable act of creation. Although Rajoub and Charestan’s musical response was deeply rooted in tradition, it also provided a fresh context and purpose for such traditional music, and thereby encouraged a new and reinvigorated engagement with it.

Qayyum has been creating similar circular calligraphic works in international spaces for the past decade. The writing of her chosen texts becomes a performance, Qayyum has explained, and encourages observers’ engagement with the process of creating an artwork, through simultaneous watching and listening. She often enters a trance-like state, she has admitted, as the meanings of her words give way to their shapes and the movements required to write them. Though drawing on the rich history of Islamic calligraphy, Qayyum offered a particularly modern perspective focused on the act of creation itself, and also its embodied connections with musical performance. Her aim, she has said, is for all participants – herself, the musicians and those observing the event – to slow their thoughts and actions, focus on the writing and playing, and contemplate the images, sound and movements, and the similarities and contrasts between them. Isma'u wa'u encouraged a mindful observation of the work being spontaneously created, as the four chosen words – listen, see, understand, remember – became suggestions of ways in which to engage with the work.

Isma'u wa'u took place after sunset at the National Museum of Qatar, Doha, a building designed by eminent French architect Jean Nouvel. This performance paves the way for a new partnership between the Aga Khan Music Programme, The Art Mill and the Music Lab, an innovative institution dedicated to empowering local young talents.

Manzar, open to the public until 31 January 2025, brings together around 200 exhibits – from paintings to photographs, videos to installations and tapestries – that represent work from more than eight decades. The exhibition explores themes of continuity and discontinuity, resilience and ecological challenges from almost 100 artists and architects based both in Pakistan and across the world, exploring their deeply personal visual languages, as well as connections with national and international styles. The exhibition forms part of the autumn/winter programme of Qatar Creates, the year-round programme of arts and culture in Qatar that aims to embed the arts and culture within Qatari society, and to encourage broad access to the best in culture from Qatar and beyond.

About the artists

Born in Karachi and now resident in Ontario, Canada, Tazeen Qayyum is an internationally recognised painter and visual artist whose work encompasses drawing, installation, sculpture, video and performance. She has been nominated for several prestigious art prizes – including the 2013 Jameel Prize and the 2014 KM Hunter Award – and she received the 2015 Excellence in Art Award from the Canadian Community Arts Initiative, as well as a UNESCO bursary in 2000 to work and study in Vienna. Elements including repetition, rhythm, balance and geometry blend in her visually complex works, which offer multi-layered understandings of the materials and techniques employed in their creation.

Virtuoso qanun player and composer Feras Charestan comes from the northeastern Syrian city of Al-Hasakeh, and currently resides in Stockholm, Sweden. He undertook his qanun studies in Damascus, and his work encompasses traditional music as well as popular and contemporary genres, including performing as a qanun soloist with symphony orchestras. He is one of the founding members of the Aga Khan Master Musicians.

Saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser and teacher Basel Rajoub was born in Aleppo and now lives in Geneva. He is renowned as a pioneering interpreter of Middle Eastern music on the saxophone, and has created new music bringing together musicians from the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and Europe. He is also one of the founding members of the Aga Khan Master Musicians, a founder member of Soriana Project bringing together music and musicians from Syria and the West, and Artistic Director of the Oriental Ensemble at Geneva’s Haute École de Musique.

Aga Khan Music Programme

Founded in 2000, the Aga Khan Music Programme (AKMP) collaborates with traditional musicians and ensembles throughout Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and West Africa. The AKMP celebrates music as an elemental expression of human spirituality, and a crucial means of fostering tolerance, curiosity and pluralism by connecting individuals and communities, and bringing musicians’ work to a global audience. While respecting and supporting communities’ often ancient traditions, the AKMP also encourages new projects from contemporary artists immersed in those rich heritages, producing music inspired by but not constrained by tradition.

The AKMP carries out its work through a network of music schools and development centres throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, in countries including Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Tajikistan. Their aims are to rethink the regions’ traditional master/apprentice learning model for our contemporary times, and to provide learning and performance opportunities for outstanding young musicians.

The AKMP’s Master Musicians form an ensemble of exceptional performers drawn from the top ranks of artists who have worked with the AKMP since its inception. The Master Musicians look beyond their individual traditions to exchange musical ideas and expertise in innovative performances, as well as passing on their skills as teachers, mentors and curators. Established in 2018, the Aga Khan Music Awards recognise exceptional creativity, promise and enterprise in music across the world.