Rafik Greiss
Mawlid Doormats
2024
Found wooden doormats, glass, metal clips
59 x 29.5 in (150 x 75 cm)
Courtesy of the artist
Rafik Greiss (b. 1997) investigates different sites—cultural, social, or symbolic—that break away from a linear, normative teleology in favor of moments of disruption and transcendence.
Mawlid Doormats are wooden doormats the artist found in Cairo during a mawlid. As a threshold to another space, the doormat signals a form of preliminary purification, but also mark another passage from the context in which they were found. Mawlids—Arabic for “anniversaries”—are celebrations of the death of Sufi walis, literally “friends of God.” As such, they mark the anniversary of the day on which the wali was “born” into the heavens. Repurposed and shown hanging on the wall, adjoined by a protective glass panel, the objects—originally found by the artist after participating and filming a hadra—are symbolically elevated and preserved, signaling a form of spiritual threshold. Interested in rituals found in Sufism, the artist explores sites where ritual brings people together in altered states of consciousness and in the search for a transcendent spiritual experience. A theme Rafik explored further in his three-channel video work The Longest Sleep, which follows the ritual of the hadra, a Sufi dance performed at mawlids in which followers whirl around in big circles. The lengthy performances can gather thousands of people in attendance, dancing with their arms uplifted in a posture reminiscent of the body’s position in prayer, inducing transcendence as a cyclical, time-distoring experience.
Provenance
Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris
Exhibitions
The Longest Sleep, Balice Hertling, Paris, November 25, 2024 – January 18, 2025
The Three-Legged Cat, 18th Istanbul Biennial, September 20 – November 23, 2025
It’s all About Time, Kunstmuseum Ravensburg, April 11 – July 19, 2026
See also
Rafik Greiss at the Istanbul Biennial https://bienal.iksv.org/en/18b-artists/rafik-greiss
Rafik Gress at Zürich Biennial https://www.kunsthallezurich.ch/en/ausstellungen/8166-zurich-biennale
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawlid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniconism_in_Islam