Art Project - 2025 | REEM HASSAN

The City of Letters – مدينة الحرف

"A doorway to meaning, a sacred shrine for love."

The City of Letters is a visual art project that draws from the essence of contemporary Arabic calligraphy, intersecting with symbolic architectural thought. In this work, the Arabic letter is no longer a mere tool for writing—it becomes a foundational architectural element that constructs a visual space resonating with identity, spirit, and aesthetic belonging.The project takes inspiration from a mystical verse by the Sufi poet Ibn al-Fāriḍ:

I built the palaces of my heart from the light of your love,and it became a mihrab for a longing that cannot see you.

بَنيتُ قصورَ القلبِ من نورِ هواك فغدتْ محرابًا لعشقٍ لا يراك

In this context, words are reimagined as architectural units—not built from stone, but from script—where each word in the verse becomes a structural block within an imagined poetic city.At the heart of the project stands a central 3D structure, imagined as a gate to a symbolic city, in which the text becomes buildings, and the flowing curves of calligraphy form paths of yearning. The project fuses traditional Islamic architectural elements—such as domes, mihrabs, and minarets—with a contemporary design language, redefining Arabic calligraphy as an architecture of love, identity, and memory.

Part I – The Gate as a Two-Dimensional WorkThis part comprises three artworks executed using transfer printing, in which the poetic text is visually reinterpreted through postmodern aesthetics. The pieces offer a renewed calligraphic vision, inspired by classical Arabic script while integrating ornamental variations drawn from diverse schools of Islamic art and design.

Part II – The Architectural Construct: “The Gate of the City of Letters”This 3D sculptural work embodies the conceptual threshold to the imagined city. The City of Letters is not built on land—it is built on language. Every letter becomes a wall, every line a street, and every verse a narrative. The gate becomes the central symbolic element that renders this invisible city visible—imbued with longing, language, and illumination.Constructed from interwoven Arabic letters, this gate is not a literal entrance, but a spiritual and metaphorical portal. It opens onto an inner architecture where light intersects with script, and where built form embraces poetic text.The piece evokes Islamic architectural references—domes, mihrabs, minarets—but reconfigured within a contemporary artistic framework, with Arabic calligraphy serving both as a visual identity and a structural framework for the city’s imagined form.