6 ½ Wochen – Bahia Shebab

Bahia Shehab’s A Thousand Times No (Essen) started as a research-based project at the intersection of Islamic art history and contemporary graphic design. In 2010, the artist collected historical examples of the Arabic letter combination lām-alif, which forms the word for “no”. The project takes as its starting point the Arabic expression lā wa-alf lā – “No, and a thousand times no” – through which Shehab articulates her dissent in the face of social and political conditions. The project marks the beginning of Shehab’s street art practice in Cairo in 2011, which has since evolved into an ongoing series of public interventions addressing resistance, identity, and social justice in cities around the world.

The collected characters originate from different centuries and geographical regions. By removing them from their original contexts and bringing them together in a visual installation, Shehab reveals both formal similarities and cultural differences. The individual fragments point to the diverse artistic traditions, languages and communities encompassed by the term “Arts of Islam”, without constituting a uniform style.

From these thousand historical fragments emerges a polyphonic portrait of Islamic art history. Shehab approaches it not as a closed legacy, but as a living tradition that opens up new perspectives on memory, resistance and cultural diversity.

Funded by