Homecoming – In the Midst of Darkness
By the late 1990s Araeen had virtually stopped producing artworks to focus on Third Text and his own writing. In 2011, he left the journal and returned to making art, while also continuing to write.
The paintings that you see in this room reference famous Islamic thinkers of the Abbasid era (8th to 13th century) and encode their names in complicated geometric structures. The relevance of medieval Arabic philosophy to Araeen's artistic concerns became more evident to the artist in his later years, though he still warns against basing the interpretation of his work on his supposed heritage. 'The symmetry of geometry in Islamic art offers, in my understanding, an allegory for human equality (Musawaat), something that humanity now desperately needs', Araeen has said.