The versatile multimedia artwork by Jordanian Hilda Hiary weaves texts, words, script, and letters into color and image, and color and image into text. She creates multiplanar works of bodies and books, languages, and images. Her art includes books that are paintings and paintings that read like books. The painting featured on the cover of this issue has writing on the face, mind, body, and garments, with the woman (or man?) holding the Arabic letter ḥaʾ close to her (his?) heart. The painting reminds us how texts write the scripts that our bodies perform but also how our bodies can rewrite those scripts and perform them anew, even as we hold them close.
On the head is written a fragment of a Rumi poem: “Love is found in every religion, but love itself has no religion.” Is it an image of Rumi in his turban? Or is it a young...
