What is the nature and significance of beauty in Islamic theology and intellectual thought? To what extent did theological, philosophical, and mystical ideas inform the production and reception of Islamic material culture? These and other questions will be the focus of the English interview series "Beauty and Islamic Theology", a series that explores the rich and diverse relationships between theology, art, and aesthetics in the Islamic world.
In this episode, we talk to master calligrapher Nuria Garcia Masip about the history, aesthetics, and practice of Islamic calligraphy. We also explore the role of faith in artistic production, and discuss the important relationship between craft and character.
Nuria Garcia Masip is a calligrapher and a doctoral candidate in Art History at Sorbonne University. Her research concentrates on the early calligraphic panels in Ottoman Sufi lodges (17th - 19th centuries). As a calligrapher, she studied under master calligrapher Mohamed Zakariya and later traveled to Istanbul where she studied with masters Davut Bektaş and Hasan Çelebi. In 2007, she received her diploma (ijazah) in the thuluth and naskh scripts signed by her three teachers. She has won prestigious prizes in international calligraphy competitions and her work forms part of various private and museum collections. Apart from her calligraphic work and research, she has offered many workshops and lectures to promote the art of calligraphy internationally.
This interview series concludes the one-year AIWG project workshop "Beauty and Islamic Theology", a joint research program of the Centre for Islamic Theology at the Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen and the Chair of Islamic Religious Studies at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg.