Radha Dalal – författare

Tracing the currents of change that unite the visual and material culture of the Islamic world across space and timeThe seas have long served as both connective tissue for and barriers between intellectual, social, and artistic traditions. Nowhere is this dual role more evident than within the visual and material cultures of the Islamic world. This remarkable new book brings together an international group of scholars and curators whose contributions address seafaring mobility’s profound effect on Islamic art. Their case studies range across the globe and span a period from Islam’s 1st century to today. Contributors examine the roles of importation and migration, travel, diplomacy, and gift giving in driving artistic innovation and changing the social, political, and religious institutions of an increasingly diverse Islamic world. Taken together, these chapters embody a distinctive big-picture approach, pulling an exceptional diversity of voices and topics into productive dialogue.

The Islamic world finds itself increasingly at the epicenter of our escalating climate emergency, both as a locus of the petrochemical industry and as home to extraordinary landscapes in which the effects of environmental transformation are acutely felt. Yet, far from a solely twenty-first-century concern, engagement with changing, and often extreme, natural conditions has long characterized Islamic art and architecture in the central Islamic lands and beyond into the Muslim diaspora.  This new book brings together a diverse group of scholars and critics whose contributions address this profound ecological awareness through the dual lenses of Islamic culture and climate change. Their case studies range from the Gulf, Iraq, Syria, the Indian Subcontinent, North Africa, and even outer space. Contributors examine the optimistic, sustainable, and innovative responses adopted by artists and builders in the face of often irreversible and escalating environmental destruction that necessitates such ingenuity. Breaking traditional disciplinary boundaries, this timely book brings together a diverse range of perspectives to bear on this increasingly urgent problem.