ABSTRACT
On January 19, 2002, a spectacular event took place at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City, called Reflections at a Time of Transformation: American Muslim Artists Reach out to New Yorkers in the Aftermath of September 11. An initiative of the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), this event was aimed at ‘healing wounds’ and ‘building interfaith and intercultural bridges’ and was to celebrate the diversity of Muslim communities in New York with and through its artists – visual artists, musicians, poets, and filmmakers among others. This event, a first of its kind, sparked numerous other events throughout the years, where Muslim communities have begun including their artists/cultural producers to become the ‘voice and face’ of representation to the wider public. My work with Muslim artists has been an attempt to think about Muslims in new ways that neither restricts them to theological belief nor locates them only at mosques. It has been an effort to rethink and remap the locations where we normally find Muslims, to question and make more complex secular/religious divides, and to think about aesthetic practices in different contexts: within the art worlds and in Muslim communities.
