Islamic Geometry & Contemporary Abstraction: Nsenga Knight at Perlman Museum

The Manifest, The Hidden: Reflections on Geometry, Lineage, and the Architecture of Devotion

When I received a request for a studio visit to discuss my artwork within the context of The Manifest, The Hidden—an exhibition at Carleton College bringing together the math department, Islamic studies, and the museum—I felt a familiar mix of gratitude and alertness.

Gratitude, because it is a profound honor to be invited into an institutional space that is thinking carefully about geometric form and Islamic art traditions. Alertness, because I am always attentive to what it means to be included: who is being centered, who is being asked to represent what, and what kinds of narratives get activated when an exhibition frames “Islamic art” for an American audience.

The Manifest, The Hidden closed its doors this past Sunday, April 12. As the works come down from the walls, I want to share a reflection on what it meant to be part of this show—especially as someone whose relationship to Islamic geometric practice is deeply personal, rigorous, and entirely nonlinear.

How the Work Entered the Conversation 

One of the things that moved me most about this exhibition was how the invitation came about.

Curator Sara Cluggish didn’t discover my geometric work through standard institutional algorithms. She learned about my practice through Dr. Kambiz Ghanea Bassiri a professor of Religious Studies at Carleton College who encountered X Speaks—my social practice and archival project—and followed that thread. They both looked deeper, found my geometric drawings, and realized they belonged in this conversation too.

That matters to me. It underscores how art truly travels: through curiosity, through witness, through people. The strongest bridges in the artworld are built by a human being paying attention.

Geometry, Devotion, and the Unseen 

The exhibition foregrounded art commonly associated with Islamic traditions. I have always been fascinated by how geometry can hold multiple truths at once:

• It is structure: mathematics, proportion, the “hard” language of proof.
• It is spiritual technology: an invitation toward the “soft” spaces of contemplation.
• It is cultural inheritance: a practice of study, discipline, and care.

For me, this language started at home. My father is a mathematician, and before geometry was a spiritual technology for me, it was his language. Today, in my own work, geometry is how I orient myself. It connects to the circular rhythms of the Hajj, the movements of the body in prayer, and the vast intelligence embedded in Muslim traditions of astronomy.

Because Islam insists on one unseen God, I am drawn to geometry as a way to connect without clinging to representation. Pattern becomes an opening. It is a way to approach the Creator without pretending you can contain the Divine in an image.

A Personal Timeline (And a Correction of Assumptions) 

There is an easy assumption some people make: that if an artist creates work aligned with an Islamic visual tradition, they must have been formally trained in it early, or “come from” a geographic place where that training is expected.

But the truth is, I made a significant body of geometric work before I ever took a formal course in traditional Islamic arts.

The tradition is vast. The forms are precise. The questions are ongoing.

Some of my work included in this exhibition—like Orientation and Other Stars—reaches back to my studio practice from 2012 and 2013. I was using the tools I knew: a compass, a protractor, and math formulas. It was only later that I studied formal Islamic art in Egypt with a master teacher—learning Handasa (geometry) and Zakhrafa (ornamentation)—and continued that practice through private lessons during the pandemic.

I name this because I want to honor the real pathway: the years of making before the years of study. The study came because the work demanded it.

On Being “American,” and Incomplete Categories 

In curating and creating didactic wall text for the exhibition, students at Carleton insisted on naming the nationalities of the artists included. I wondered how useful that information would actually be for the audience. I am American born of parents who are continentally from the Americas – South America and the Caribbean to be exact. When institutions label me “American,” it isn’t wrong, but it might not be informative. I’m curious if flattens the actual story of who I am or if its ambiguity describes what it means to be “American.”

My identity is a synthesis. I am a Black Muslim artist, raised in the Afro-Caribbean warmth of Flatbush, Brooklyn, and currently living and working in the vast desert architecture of Doha, Qatar. I am a child of converts. I am not from a “traditional” Muslim cultural background, but I am unequivocally Muslim and Black. That complicates easy categorization, and it should.

What I make is not about “representation” in a shallow, checkbox way. I think often of Toni Morrison’s refusal to perform for the white gaze; I am not here to prove anything or pander to ignorance. And still, there is something deeply significant about who is included in conversations about Islamic art in the U.S. There are politics of visibility even within non-representational art.

What Remains After the Doors Close 

I hope The Manifest, The Hidden left visitors with more than an admiration for beautiful forms. I hope it pushed gently against the idea that Islamic art is a sealed historical category—something “over there,” belonging only to the past.

I am immensely grateful to have had my work in this exhibition. A massive thank you to Kambiz Ghanea Bassiri, who first introduced my work to his Islamic Studies students years ago, to Professor MurphyKate Montee of the math department, and to Sara Cluggish for adding such rich context to the space.

Thank you for allowing these works to be found within the context and conversations on Islamic Art, and for sitting with the geometry.