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ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Welcome to This Being Human. I’m your host Abdul-Rehman Malik. On this podcast, I talk to extraordinary people from all over the world whose life, ideas and art are shaped by Muslim culture.

SAKS AFRIDI:

If you look in a lot of works in the past, you look at Star Wars, you look at. There’s so many different things, there’s spirituality in all of it. And I just happen to love sci-fi and Sufism and I find similarities in both.

MUSIC

SAKS AFRIDI:

Every human being on the planet had the possibility of one prayer being answered every 24 hours. However, this phenomenon has been wiped from our memories due to the arrival of this spiritual machine, this spaceship from the future.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

This is artist Saks Afridi.

He has called his art Sci-fi Sufism. This mix of the spiritual and the speculative informs much of his work.

SAKS AFRIDI:

And the vessel manifested itself differently to everybody seeing it, based on their own biases and faiths. And so the very first place where this vessel was seen was in Pakistan. And the news reporters that saw it there, they looked in the sky and they saw a hovering minaret. Because that’s what their faith and biases led them to see. And so, they named it Space Mosque. The moniker stuck, but the vessel really manifested itself differently to everybody looking at it. Somebody saw, you know, a winged butterfly. Other people saw an abstract orb. Some people just saw like liquid floating in the sky. Some people saw a cube. Some people saw a church. Some people saw a pyre. You know, so everybody saw it differently.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Space Mosque is a project that’s taken on many forms over the years. But it’s all rooted in this mythology.

MUSIC RESOLVES

SAKS AFRIDI:

During this phenomenon, as you can imagine, you know, humanity being what it is, good things happened and bad things happened. And initially, everybody started praying for money. Of course, that happens. But with that comes insane inflation and then money becomes pointless. And then, you know, slowly people start discovering that the only thing that really kind of does have power is prayer. And prayer becomes the global de facto world currency.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Mmm.

SAKS AFRIDI:

Certain cunning individuals also discover that children’s prayers tend to be answered a lot more and have a higher probability of being realized because of their intentions. And this, we believe, gave rise to the prayer farms and the, uh, the rise of the prayer campuses.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Mm.

SAKS AFRIDI:

There were organizations and corporations that started building this, and before you knew it, the world’s religions were their clients, the world’s governments were their clients, the world’s corporations were their clients. And they suddenly started playing God. They reached a point, and of course, the vessel was not designed for this, and it started to glitch. And, you know, we also have seen a lot of evidence of global riots that happened around the world. And we believe that enough. We think that enough people prayed for it all to go away, that it did.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Mm.

SAKS AFRIDI:

And all we’re left with are these artifacts and remnants being found even today in different parts of the world that are of that phenomenon. And we think that the reasons these artifacts were left behind were because of the glitch.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Saks Afridi has made prayer rugs with UFOs stitched into the design, and others that depict doors opening into unfamiliar worlds. He has shown paintings that look like some combination of a circuit board and traditional Islamic geometrics. They’re immediately striking. So it makes sense that his day job is in advertising, a world where attention is gold.

Space Mosque itself has taken many physical forms. In some exhibitions, you can see renditions of what the Space Mosque looked like to some people. In others, you can see the artifacts that Saks talked about. Newspaper clippings, for example, or the one that caught my eye: a winged Hawa sandal.

SAKS AFRIDI:

You know, as thinking of stories within the world of Space Mosque, one of the stories is of a boy whose parents were estranged. You know, divorce is is a difficult thing in Pakistan. And everywhere. And sometimes people don’t divorce and just separate or whatever. So this was the case in this boy’s life. And he had a close relationship with his father. But, you know, he lived with his mother and her family. And so one day he prayed for somehow to be able to spend more time with his dad. And that was it. And he went to sleep. And the next morning, his sandals had grown wings. And so after school, he would fly to see his father, who was about an hour away, and he would spend time with his dad and then fly back. He became popular in his school. And then a reporter caught on to it and then wrote an article about it. And we found this in an article in Dawn Newspaper of that time. And so we have a photo from there as well. But then we also recovered the artifact as well. And so, in the exhibit, we see this winged sandal. Now, this is a. Okay, so that’s the narrative part of it. Now, in reality, this kind of came about by, I grew up wearing Peshawari chappals, or, you know, kheri, as we call them all the time. And it’s a double flapped sandal. Paul Smith has knocked it off. Christian Louboutin has knocked it off. You know, they’re legendary sort of. They go back hundreds of years, these sandals. Probably back to the Romans or the Greeks or with Alexander the Great. So I had the idea of putting wings on them. And they were basically these Peshawari chappals, but they put a sneaker sole on them.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Very cool.

SAKS AFRIDI:

I thought that was genius. I thought that was really genius. And so then, when I came up with the story, my wife Susie said, “Hey, you should connect these two things together!” I hadn’t even thought of it. You know, she’s way smarter than I am, and thinks of these connections all the time. And then I reached out to Markhor and they were amazing.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Wow.

SAKS AFRIDI:

They were fantastic. They have been, they are, they continue to be. I worked with the shoe designers at Markhor. Her name is Noor, she’s their head designer. Later on, I approached Markhor and said, “Hey, what if we made these into actual wearables, but with smaller wings? So they’re not flying around everywhere and people can actually use them practically.” And so we designed a version with smaller wings and those, we then released as a limited edition of like 100. And after the limited edition sold, we opened it out and now we have three colors. We have white, tan, and black. And you can get them at Markhor.com, on the website. Just go under artist collaboration areas. And they’re custom-made, you know, sandals! And we make them upon order and they are the most comfortable things ever. They’re so comfortable.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

I love this, Saks! You—

SAKS AFRIDI:

They became a product!

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Yeah, I mean, it’s so amazing. You actually. It’s almost like you and your collaborators willed it into existence from the realm of imagination. This is the actual artifact from the experience of the Space Mosque. Now, I can now wear it and I can enjoy it, and I can live the story through it.

SAKS AFRIDI:

So, I have to be very clear. The Space Mosque is not something that I have come up with entirely on my own. It’s impossible to make all these pieces entirely on my own. The narrative, the idea. Yes. But I have worked with journalists in coming up with, like thinking about what would really happen in the world? I’ve talked in depth with economists, with, I mean. I work with journalists in like putting together the newspapers in Pakistan. Those are actual newspapers that were printed in the actual newspaper presses in Pakistan, the Jang and Dawn newspaper. Those are legit from those actual presses. And then, the question came about of, okay, what are these artifacts going to look like? How do we make these? Enter Ferda Kolatan. Ferda Kolatan is this awesome architect and professor at UPenn and Pratt. And I discovered him on Instagram and he’d been doing these really cool things with his class and so I reached out to him and, you know, we met. And this idea kind of came about of, okay, let’s kind of make this idea of hybridized spiritual machines as part of his spring semester project for his class. And now suddenly we’ve got 25 students of architecture that, you know, we briefed essentially, and I gave them this hard drive of Islamic architectural models, of 3D models. And another giant folder of spaceship models, engine models. Like, you know all these other sci-fi space engine components that I found and bought and, you know, things like that all over the Internet and these 3D assets. And basically gave it to these students to essentially kitbash.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Wow.

SAKS AFRIDI:

And kitbash they did. And there were honestly over a hundred different designs that came out of this. Ferda and I selected a few. We tweaked them. We worked with the students. Some of them actually became 3D printed sculptures. Some of them were left as renderings. Photographic renderings made to look real. Again, people think these were real when they see them. These objects were not intended to look like they belong in a spaceship or they belong in like an Islamic institution. They’re meant to be neither, of either place. They’re supposed to be, like, hybridized in a way of like, “what??”

MUSIC

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

I have a small favour to ask you. If you enjoy this show, there’s a really quick thing you can do to help us make it even better. Just take five minutes to fill out a short survey. This is the Aga Khan’s first-ever podcast and a little bit of feedback will help us measure our impact and reach more people with extraordinary stories from some of the most interesting artists, thinkers, and leaders on the kaleidoscope of Muslim experience. To participate, go to agakhanmuseum.org/tbhsurvey. That’s agakhanmusic.org/tbhsurvey.  The link is also in the show notes. Thanks for listening to This Being Human. Now, back to the interview.

MUSIC RESOLVES

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

I love the fact that, you know, when I go on to your website, you know, you are sitting literally on the fence between art and advertising. And even as we explore your work, you kind of give us these two different paths into your creative output. So as someone whose work sits at the intersection of art and advertising, what is Saks Afridi selling me?

SAKS AFRIDI:

Hey, you know, so I’m glad you brought this up because I find inspiration from advertising that then I use on the art side. And I find inspiration in the art side that I bring into the advertising side. And I do this both ways, and sometimes those worlds cross. I have a 16-year-old son and I, if I’m showing him a video or anything that’s longer than a minute, he’s not staying focused. He’s moving on. He’s moving on to something else. I can feel the boredom, I can feel the eyeroll. I can feel the sigh. And we live in a 60-second, TikTok world. And the idea of trying to get feelings or thoughts across in this short period of time, Advertising does that.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Mhm.

SAKS AFRIDI:

And I try to use some of those techniques in art to try and get people to sort of have, let it have an impact on you and then, you know, let it sit with you for a while. I remember there was an artist who saw my UFO rug for the first time, and I think his instinctual, instinctive, very first reaction was, “hahaha, cute.” And at the time, I remember, like, later on that night, I was like, calling my work cute, you know, how dare he?! But then I thought about like, oh, no, I can see why he thought that, because it’s lighthearted to look at. But then you have to understand, like, as you kind of spend a little time with it, those who choose to can think about, well, what is it like to feel like an outsider? Or like, what does it feel like to be bound by tradition and like, you know, trapped? Or what does it feel like to be in a place where nobody gets you and you feel like an alien? And suddenly everybody can relate to that. I think advertising, besides the fact that it pays my bills, it also helps me with storytelling and the ability of trying to get a complex thought succinctly down into, try and fit it into a paragraph. Try and explain it to somebody in 30 seconds. And I found a lot of artists struggle doing that. And the only reason I can do it is because I forced myself to explain it or prune it down. I have a half hour version if you want to hear it, but I’ve got a 30-second version, too.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

I love that. And I love the idea that you’re almost able to scale, scale message and meaning to the moment that people find themselves in as they’re engaging with your work. But I think you also have something on your side here because your work is arresting. It kind of demands that you consider it. And the way I would describe it, Saks, is your work, to me, is like really unafraid and unambiguous about certain things. Which I immediately read. And one of those things, for instance, is prayer. This kind of incredible selection of prayer rugs and prayer rugs being almost the canvas for a whole range of quite literally fantastical, speculative stories and vistas and portals into other worlds, to me is absolutely fascinating in a world that is often very suspicious of public prayer.

SAKS AFRIDI:

Yes. Yes.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

You have made prayer in some ways a central part of your, of your work. I find that fascinating. Talk to me about how you came to that point because it’s something that’s really cool and disruptive.

SAKS AFRIDI:

9/11 was how I came to it. Simple.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Mm. Wow.

SAKS AFRIDI:

If it wasn’t for 9/11, I would not have a need to fight Islamophobia. I would not have developed a need to try to explain the beauty of what Islam is. Or to…not explain. Explain’s the wrong word. Highlight, represent, build bridges. And that’s been my goal through it all. So in a way, I kind of have 9/11 to thank for my identity in many ways, because if there wasn’t that need, I would probably not be making work in this direction. And I have 9/11 to thank for my journey with religion and my journey to rediscover Islam and to build a relationship with God and with understanding all of Sufism’s various aspects, or trying to. And this, all of this, I don’t think, would have happened if I wasn’t trying to express and build bridges. So I think that’s really what did it. And then rugs were just like a, were not even intended to sort of necessarily be, be an instrument or be part of the language. It started off with just the one UFO rug, but then along the way, I really kind of fell in love with the patterns in geometry. Since then, I’ve found similarities in Islamic patterns and design connected to engineering schematics and circuitry. And which is now a visual way of connecting the past with the future. And so, you know, these things sort of like literally wove its way in. What started off as a one-off piece ended up sort of developing. And I didn’t think there would be more in there, but the rugs, whether they’re used as function or as form on the wall or portals in between, you know, connecting dimensions or redefining them completely. Right now I’m in the middle of making a synthesizer, a rug synth, that is, an actual synthesizer that you’ll be able to sort of adjust and tweak, but it’s a rug and I’m sort of connecting it to Space Mosque as well. But these are all patterns and things that kind of keep recurring. And the objective is to try and disarm. What started off as a disarming exercise ended up becoming more of a self journey. And then at the same time, looking at what is going on around us and sort of seeing how that can also connect to people and sometimes it’s taken the way of a book cover, other times it’s taken the way of an actual wall mounted rug. Sometimes it’s been a rendering of one, you know.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Mm.

SAKS AFRIDI:

So the mediums have also kind of changed. Sometimes it’s just been the design of one and the object has stayed digital the entire time and it has never been woven.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Wow.

SAKS AFRIDI:

So, you know, many of them are just rugs that nobody’s even really stepped on but have still kind of connected.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

You know, as you’re speaking, I’m reminded of your work in Space Time Continuum, for instance, where you have these prayer rugs that depict doors opening into another world. And as you’re speaking, you know, that image immediately came to my mind. And I said, yes, that’s exactly what you’re doing, isn’t it? That as you’re actually working on, with these materials and creating this work, you’re manifesting everything that you’ve said and you’re weaving it right into the fabric of the work in front of you. Because I think for me, what was so kind of powerful, particularly about that work is its… there’s something kind of awesome and terrifying about that work, isn’t it?

SAKS AFRIDI:

That one is literally an exploration.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Yeah, it’s like—

SAKS AFRIDI:

An invitation to go, jump or not.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Exactly. And that piece in particular because you see this literally this doorway opening in your prayer rug, you’re like, there’s either yes or no. And if it’s yes, I’m all in and I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t know if I’m going to come back. And that’s a very powerful feeling to evoke in a prayer rug or a carpet.

SAKS AFRIDI:

And that particular piece, whether it’s on the floor and whether it’s in the wall, has different impacts as well, whether on the floor it takes you, it can take you into, you know, this idea of hell underneath. But, you know, you put it on the wall and it takes you into this idea of dimension on the other side, you know?

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Wow.

SAKS AFRIDI:

So it’s funny how like, the X and the Y axis change and the meaning of the door changes.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

I love that. Saks, you call your work often sci-fi Sufism. Tell me about that. How did you come to this meeting of the speculative and the spiritual? Or maybe the speculative has always been spiritual.

SAKS AFRIDI:

Yeah, I think speculative has been spiritual. In, if you look in a lot of works in the past, you look at Star Wars, you look at so many different things, there’s spirituality in all of it. And I just happen to love sci-fi and Sufism, and I find similarities in both. And so, you know, I thought, there are places with, you know, it’s about. Sufism is about discovering, you know, journeys within yourself, you know?

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Mmm.

SAKS AFRIDI:

And sci-fi is about journeys and discovering of outer space.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Mmm.

SAKS AFRIDI:

So, they’re both journeys. They’re both about discovery, they’re both about exploration. One is about the self, one is about the unknown. And a lot of people don’t know themselves.

MUSIC

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

You play a lot with letters and calligraphy and words. And there’s one piece that you have called the Great Refusal, which is a sculpture of the Arabic word “la,” which, of course, means “no.” But you’ve shaped the word “la” into a slingshot. And there’s like, when you first see it, you kind of stop—

SAKS AFRIDI:

What a time to bring that up!

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

I know, truly, truly! There’s, like, you say, no, and you’re like, looking at it. And it’s almost like the piece is, I almost feel like the piece is moving, right? It’s almost caught in a moment where the shot is about to be, it’s about to be slung.

SAKS AFRIDI:

But it’s also heavy and unflexible.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Mmm. It’s an amazing piece and it plays on your mind. Once you see it, you kind of go back to it and you’re like, wow, that was, that, that captured something in me, that touched me.

SAKS AFRIDI:

So I think being married to a Palestinian has a lot to do with it.

MUSIC

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

We recorded this conversation on October 10th, 2023, just days after Hamas carried out their attack on Israel, and Israel declared war in response.

MUSIC

SAKS AFRIDI:

We grew up seeing the David and Goliath slingshot, the Palestinian against the tank slingshot. You know, today there are rockets. But there were slingshots at one point. And, the idea of using your words instead of your actions is really kind of the whole, sort of, taking of that piece and the great refusal, the great, from Marcuse, the phrase comes from. But the idea of…to say no is not easy, when your family’s being kicked out and your homes are being entered, you know, it’s not easy to say no to violence. And this is a call to say no to violence. And in the form of a slingshot, but a slingshot that’s inoperable.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Mmm. Mmm.

SAKS AFRIDI:

It doesn’t work. It doesn’t have what it needs to even reach the target or even to have an impact. And even once it hits the target, it’s not going to have the desired effect. And so, the words are going to have the desired effect. And so this is an invitation to say no to violence and to really say yes to understanding each other/ And so that’s why it’s this great refusal. It’s a great refusal to say no to violence. It’s also a great refusal to accept the narrative that is being fed. But at the same time it’s also kind of sad because it’s incapable of doing any of that. And all it can do is just say the word. It can’t even be a slingshot. And so it’s, um, it’s really kind of a reminder that, you know, we. I don’t know, maybe I’m sad about it today. And I usually try and find a positive, um, sort of like, this is a hope that we can connect with each other and understand each other’s differences, but. Yeah, today doesn’t feel like that.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

No.

SAKS AFRIDI:

Especially today.

MUSIC

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Saks Afridi, tell me about a joy or a meanness that came to you as an unexpected visitor.

SAKS AFRIDI:

COVID. Both. It came as a joy and a meanness. March 2020, uh, I got it and gave it to my entire family during the days when a thousand people a day were dying in New York City. We didn’t know if we were going to make it. But joy, prayer, Surah Ar-Rahman, you know, get you through it and also get you to appreciate your family and loved ones even more.

MUSIC

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Thank you so much for being with me on This Being Human.

SAKS AFRIDI:

Thank you so much for having me. You’re a wonderful human being yourself.

MUSIC

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Thanks for listening to This Being Human.

You can see artifacts from the Space Mosque and other works we talked about today by clicking on the link in the show notes.

This Being Human is presented by the Aga Khan Museum. Through the arts, the Aga Khan Museum sparks wonder, curiosity, and understanding of Muslim cultures and their connection with other cultures. This Being Human is produced by Antica Productions in partnership with TVO. Our senior producer is Imran Ali Malik. Our associate producer is Emily Morantz. Our executive producers are Laura Regehr and Stuart Coxe.

Mixing and sound design by Phil Wilson. Our associate audio editor is Cameron McIver. Original music by Boombox Sound. Shaghayegh Tajvidi is TVO’s Managing Editor of Digital Video and Podcasts. Laurie Few is the executive for digital at TVO.