Peter Hristoff. Untitled2005. Wool; 159 1/2 x 73 3/4 in. Personal collection
“At a current MetFridays occasion in the Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia, I discussed prayer carpets (seccades— not as a scholar of the Islamic arts, however as an artist. In 1997 I began a series of illustrations based upon my presumptions of what individuals wish and why they hope. I ultimately turned these illustrations into a suite of serigraph prints entitled 10 Prayers that I displayed, in September 1998, at my very first one-man program at the Yapi Kredi Cultural Center’s Kazim Taskent Gallery in Istanbul. These works then caused a series of bigger “carpet” pieces done on rice paper, which integrated the themes I was utilizing in my paintings (masks, birds, skulls, elegant flowers, cosmological signs, and figures) with the official structure of Anatolian carpets.”
My interest in halis (carpets) and kilims (flat weaves) was a natural connection to the journal-like quality of my work. I was interested by the diarist aspects in conventional Turkish carpet making– the weaver including occasions, individual beliefs, hopes, and desires with conventional local signs into their work– a technique I integrated (and still include) into my art making.
I started to deal with rug-inspired prints a couple of years later on, in which I would, every day, finish a horizontal band of the structure that tape-recorded my interests, individual folklores, and creative fixations. I constantly had the objective of ultimately developing real halis and kilims in Turkey, as the concept of the seccade (prayer carpets) especially interested me– an item that develops a spiritual area anywhere it is put, and is charged with hope and spiritual connections along with a physical relationship to the body and location.
Left: Peter Hristoff. Untitled2005. Wool; 85 x 51 in. Collection of Ömer Özyürek. : A carpet maker reveals one of her pieces in a material store in Tokat, Turkey, June 2015. Picture by the author
The routine of positioning, prayer, and absolution all take advantage of concerns I have actually been resolving in my work given that the early 1980s, that make the seccade— a things of reflection and decor– an apparent focus in my work. I have an interest in “brilliant unhappiness,” a term I encountered in the Patriarch Bartholomew’s declaration in the exhibit brochure that accompanied Byzantium: Faith and Power (2004 ), which most precisely explains my interests. In the publication, Bartholomew composes: “This describes a blended feeling of delight, over the prepared for assistance from God and Salvation, and grief, for the suffering of life and sin.” This juxtaposition of the spiritual and the physical, the delighted and the unfortunate– humanity’s conflicted nature– continues to be a primary style of my work.
Peter Hristoff. 10 Seccades,