Maps, Signs and Symbols, After Princess Fahrelnissa Zeid, Istanbul/Turkey, 7.34m x 1.88m, 2024

This panoramic digital work overlays a dense constellation of global maps, signs, and symbols onto a Gigapan image of Sultanahmet Square in Istanbul, where the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque loom on either side like guardians of a chaotic present. Drawing inspiration from Princess Fahrelnissa Zeid’s Break of the Atom and Vegetal Life (1962), the image echoes her fusion of abstraction and emotion, yet updates the palette with a symbolic deluge: national flags, road signs, emojis, internet icons, and warning markers cascade through the composition like a digital Babel. Stretching 7.34 meters wide, this piece replicates the fragmented poetry of Zeid’s visionary forms by substituting organic brushstrokes with the hard-edged logos of our modern existence. Istanbul becomes both stage and symbol—its historic skyline submerged beneath a semiotic flood, reflecting the visual noise of a hyperconnected, overstimulated world.

As Zeid once said, “I am a descendent of four civilisations. In my self-portrait, the hand is Persian, the eye is Byzantine, the dress is Bedouin, and the heart is Ottoman” (Zeid, 2015, p. 42). Her words resonate through this work, where multiple identities and histories collide in a tapestry of coded abstraction. The result is both lyrical and disorienting, a dreamlike topography that maps out the collision of identities, languages, and cultures. Viewers are invited to navigate this sprawling visual system, where meaning and confusion coexist, just as in Zeid’s abstraction, the spiritual and the atomic, the vegetal and the cosmic, find uneasy harmony (Shabout, 2015).

References:
Shabout, N. (2015). Fahrelnissa Zeid: Painter of Inner Worlds. London: Tate Publishing.
Zeid, F., quoted in Shabout, N. (2015). Fahrelnissa Zeid: Painter of Inner Worlds. London: Tate Publishing, p. 42.