Open call for ‘Power of the Word IV’
The Power of the Word project includes a series of participatory curatorial interventions in the Eastern Islamic Art Gallery in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. Launched in 2018, over the course of its various editions it has explored diverse themes such as the place of women in Islamic art, pilgrimage and universal narratives interpreted in diverse cultural contexts.
The fourth intervention in this series is called Divine Wisdom: The Sufi way. In Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, the aesthetic experience has its own clear path: art and poetry are two manifestations of the beauty and majesty of Allah.
Divine Wisdom: the Sufi way seeks to investigate the objects in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum collection that are related to Sufism and, in each one, find the harmony, unity and sensitivity that show the way to wonder, inspiration and peace.
As a participatory curatorial project, it aims to create a space for meeting, sharing and reflecting on the objects in the collection and on Sufi poetry. Together, participants, curators and mediators will contemplate Sufi expression in art and find poems that reveal or interact with the messages conveyed by Sufism.
The project is aimed at people who are curious about Sufism as well as those who are already familiar with it. Participation involves three work sessions (one online and two in-person) and individual research into poetry. The main languages of communication are Portuguese and English, but all mother tongues are welcome!
The guest co-curator of this edition is Fabrizio Boscaglia, a university professor and researcher at the Religious Studies department of the Universidade Lusófona.
How will the project work?
12 participants will be selected from this open call to join a work group with the curators and mediators. All those interested can apply until 15 December.
You will receive a response by 15 January 2022. Candidates will be selected following these criteria:
- Personal and/or professional motivation in taking part in the project;
- Diversity of profiles, allowing those who are already familiar with Sufism to meet those to whom it is new;
- Diversity of languages, cultural origins and interests; given the nature of the collection, knowledge or study of a Middle Eastern language would be of benefit, although the main languages of communication will be Portuguese and/or English.
What do we expect from participants?
Each participant will be invited to reflect and make a creative contribution to the final exhibition. The work group will meet online for the first session (January) and in-person for two further sessions (February). Based on a group of works presented by the curators, the group will choose poems that can form part of the exhibition and the related web page, among other media. The task of gathering and selecting poems is carried out individually, between the two in-person sessions. We estimate that full participation in the project will require around 16 hours (8 hours in the work group and 8 hours of individual study).
Application Form