Orientation Week
Stories of Hamzanama
After reading books for as long as I can remember, an introduction to one filled with fantasy did not come as a surprise. But to look at it with the idea of how to capture the spatial sense of visuals that we imagine while reading it, was inexplicable.
However, charcoal as a medium allows quite a lot of freedom to just kick off with the nebulous images in mind and pour it down on paper. Taking only a few elements such as fire and smoke into consideration, we made a small model, experimenting with the materiality and scale.
Eventually went on to fill a space with hay to give a hazy, slightly suffocating and an uncertain experience in terms of tactility, feel, and sight.
-“A dragon lives near this city, and when he exhales, a flame darts from his mouth for a distance of seven kos, burning everything in its path. When the dragon inhales, everything for a distance of seven kos gets sucked into his open mouth. This city has lived with this scourge for many years, and all things animate and inanimate have been marked by his shadow. The dragon has just exhaled, causing all this commotion in the city and setting all creation to great ferment and turmoil.”
-Amir drew his dagger, rushed at the monster, and, pressing his dagger to the dragon’s scales, cut through them all the way to his spine, killing the dragon. Such a huge amount of smoke billowed from the dragon’s mouth that it became dark for many kos around, and the sky resembled a ball of smoke.
~Hamzanama: The Adventures of Amir Hamza