Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian:
Luminous Shadow

Luminous Shadow is the first collaborative commission in the Banner Series and has been developed by Abu Dhabi-based artists Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian in collaboration with Angie Goto, an Australian Deaf artist. 

Rooted in the philosophy of the Sufi mystic Ibn ʿArabi (1165–1240), whose writings contemplate the quest to see beyond the visible and to uncover deeper truths within darkness, the project also draws on the fantastical imagery of Zakariya al-Qazwini’s thirteenth century manuscript Wonders of Creatures, alongside Australian Sign Language (Auslan). Together, these sources shape a meditation on the concept of “black light” — articulated by Ibn ʿArabi as a fertile, generative darkness where language and body converge and art becomes a form of shared, material thought. 

In Ibn ʿArabi’s philosophy, black light is not the absence of light, but its origin: a luminous shadow that holds all possibilities before they take shape. This is a space of emergence, a pre-verbal realm where beings and meanings exist in suspension, waiting to be named. 

The Banner project translates this vision into a shared artistic form. Ibn ʿArabi’s words, first inscribed on the page, enter a back-and-forth process of visual correspondence between the artists. Through this exchange with Auslan, text and meaning are absorbed, transformed, and reborn as a visual poem through the medium of sign language.