This past week, I attended the Hamad Bin Khalifah Symposium on Islamic Art at VCUarts in Qatar, titled Islamic Art and Visual Culture in Contemporary Asia. It was a powerful and timely gathering—one that nurtured my ongoing inquiry into my own cultural and spiritual heritage as a Afro-Caribbean American Muslim artist, and challenged the boundaries of what we’ve been taught to consider “Islamic Art”. By focusing on Islamic Art in West Asia – region considered in the peripheral margins of what is considered the Islamic world (although it holds the largest population of Muslims), the conference sought to decenter Islamic art.
Though I now live Qatar – which is considered part of Asia, my personal connection to Islamic visual culture in Asia began decades ago. In my early 20s, I spent a summer in Malaysia studying Islamic studies and Arabic, with a visit to Singapore as well. It was a time of deep immersion—not just tourism. Later, as a student at the University of Pennsylvania, I traveled to China specifically to photograph the interior calligraphy of the Niujie Mosque in Beijing, the city’s oldest mosque—nearly a thousand years old. The symposium reminded me that those rare photographs, last exhibited fifteen years ago, are long overdue for publication.
This year’s theme was contemporary Islamic visual culture in Asia, yet the deeper question at the heart of our conversations was this:
What is Islamic art, and who decides?
Facing Mecca: Reorienting Islamic Art to the Kaaba
At the symposium, many scholars referenced the home of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) as a foundational reference in Islamic architecture. But to truly understand the roots of Islamic artistic and architectural heritage, I believe we must go back further—to the Kaaba.
The Kaaba is the first Islamic structure, and crucially, it predates the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). It goes back to the earliest time of human existence as a monotheistic pilgrimage site in the time of Adam, then later Ibrahim with the addition of the Black Stone. For Muslims, Islam is not considered to be a new religion, but instead a continuation of the message all the prophets brought – worship and submit to the one and only God, with no partners – this is the path to peace.
As people strayed away from the central message of Islam, for centuries the Kaaba became not only a pilgrimage site for monotheistic people from all over the world but also for idol worshippers who desecrated it. When the Prophet Muhammad The Prophet Muhammad personally entered the Kaaba and destroyed the idols he recited a verse from the Quran: “Truth has come and falsehood has vanished”. In reflecting on this, we’re reminded of a fundamental truth: the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) reignited and crystalized the message of Islam—he did not invent it.
What is Islam?
It is the tradition of monotheistic spiritual expression of people, made manifest through intention, ritual, and culture.
What is so beautiful about this is that people from all parts of the world are able to articulate Islam through their own cultures. Hence, the work of Muslim artists expressing Islamic concepts becomes the articulation of Islamic Art. The Quran is our guide; the Prophet Muhammad is our living example. Our role is to continuously align ourselves with that framework—to return to fitra (pure nature), and allow that alignment to shape our lives and cultural expressions.
De-centering the Canon of Islamic Art
Too often—especially through colonial or orientalist frameworks—Islam is restricted to a narrow aesthetic. This narrowness has shaped the very concept of “Islamic art” as we know it today.
One of the most inspiring aspects of this symposium was seeing the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha take up the responsibility to decenter and decolonize these dominant narratives. The term “Islamic art” didn’t emerge organically. It was formalized through European colonial institutions, which elevated certain objects and forms based on what they admired, and cast others as marginal.
But this symposium reminded us of a deeper truth:
There is no single “center” of Islamic art. There is only a constellation—a living, decentralized network of spiritual and cultural production.
If we return to the Kaaba as a model, what do we see? A simple black cube. And yet, it is the most powerful form in our tradition—gathering people across every culture, elevating us in ritual, aligning us to something higher.
What if we viewed Islamic art the same way?
Adorning the Kaaba: Amplifying Beauty, Not Inventing Anew
A thread throughout the symposium was the dome—often cited as a hallmark of Islamic architecture. But the dome was not invented by Muslims. It existed in pre-Islamic Persian and Christian architecture, and even further back. The brilliance of Islam is not that it invented something new—but that it took what was beautiful, and amplified it.
This is what the Prophet and his companions did when they purified the Kaaba. They removed the idols—anything that obstructed true worship—but they covered the image of Mary (peace be upon her) with their hands. They preserved it, recognizing it as part of our shared monotheistic heritage.
Islam refines and amplifies what is inherently beautiful.
It gathers. It elevates. It remembers.
As a Black Muslim artist of Afro-Caribbean and American descent, I see myself as part of that lineage. My work is an extension of this spiritual heritage—even as it expands beyond the canon. It is informed by my own cultural memory, diasporic movement, and ritual practice.
Projects like To Know One Another use hospitality and gathering as artistic form, echoing the Kaaba’s structure of convergence. My Fitra Paintings explore the poetics of spiritual origin, drawing from Islamic abstraction and color symbolism to reconnect with the divine nature we carry.
Islamic Art: A Decentered, Living Tradition
Muslims are everywhere. And we are creating art everywhere. The power of Islamic art is not in conforming to colonial categories—but in its capacity to gather, to transcend, to honor both continuity and transformation.
This symposium re-affirmed for me that Islamic art is not a fixed style or geography. It is a spiritual project, a way of seeing and making that brings us back to fitra, to unity, to remembrance. It has always been a long-standing project of non-Muslim colonizers to fix and confine the beauty of Islam. But to the contrary, Islamic Art, like the Kaaba, invites us—wherever we come from—to face and express a common truth together.
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📚 Further Reading
For those interested in deeper reflections on Islamic art, cultural heritage, and decolonial frameworks, here are a few recommended readings:
- The Silent Theology of Islamic Art – Renovatio (Zaytuna College)
A profound meditation on the spiritual underpinnings of Islamic art, arguing that art can itself be a silent form of dhikr (remembrance). - The Concept of Islamic Art: Inherited Discourses and New Approaches – Gülru Necipoğlu, Harvard University
A seminal academic paper unpacking how colonial and orientalist legacies shaped the field of Islamic art history—and why it’s time to rethink it. - What Do We Mean When We Say “Islamic Art”? – DOAJ
A short but insightful essay calling for a critical reevaluation of the term “Islamic art” and its modern applications. - Decolonizing Islamic Art in Africa – Intellect Books
A fresh perspective on how African Muslim artists and communities define Islamic aesthetics on their own terms. - How History and Modernity Inform Islamic Art in the 21st Century – The Art Newspaper
A journalistic overview of contemporary Islamic art’s evolution, with a global and cross-cultural lens aligned with this blog’s themes. - The Religious Plot in Museums (or the Lack Thereof): The Case of Islamic Art – MDPI
Explores how Islamic art is curated in museum settings—and the often-missing religious/spiritual context in institutional narratives.
💬 Let’s Stay in Conversation
If you’re curating exhibitions, organizing symposia, or building collections that center global Islamic perspectives, art of Muslims or the African Diaspora, or decolonial aesthetics, I’d love to connect.
You can explore my work at nsengaknight.com or reach out directly.
Let’s continue building art that gathers and elevates.