ArtMusicEventsAbout
Meter & Light: Night 20253-channel audiovisual installation (22’00”)
Preview at Recess residency closing reception, November 22, 2024. Photo credit: Manuel Molina Martagon

Meter & Light: Night is a 3-channel audiovisual installation which enacts the interlocking rhythms of time in Muslim life, specifically after sunset: prayers marking the last light, sleepless recitations marking the Night of Power, retreat to sacred shrines, the forgiveness of debts and donations of food for all to share at dawn.

Commissioned by and premiered in summer 2025 at The Shed in New York City. 

  • Ensemble for live performance & activation on July 25, 2025: Zain Alam and Zeerak Ahmed (vocals), Darian Donovan Thomas (violin), Zeelie Brown (cello), Warren Hildebrand (guitar and electronics)

Meter & Light: Day    20243-channel audiovisual installation (20’00”)
Pictured at Recess and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, 2024. 
Photo credit: Manuel Molina Martagon & Argenis Apolario
Meter & Light: Day is an aesthetic inquiry into the rhythmic foundations that fashion senses of time as lived by Muslims. Drawing upon the artist’s training in Islamic studies and as a composer, a 3-channel audiovisual installation enacts in music and in miniature the tradition's many interlocking rhythms: the passage of light, modes of cleansing, utterances in remembrance of the Divine, daily prayer.

  • Cinematography by Sam B. Jones
  • Audio engineering & additional production by Warren Hildebrand
  • Cast: Zain Alam, Hamza Tahir, Jesse Alvarez
  • Additional production by: 
  • Supported by: Wave Farm & New York State Council for the Arts (NYSCA), Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Nawat Fes, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, and The Laundromat Project

Exhibition history:



I am sounding a sacred space 2022-2023Duration variable (20’ to 80’)
Photo credit: Gabrielle Beaumont
I am sounding a sacred space is an experimental sound performance series featuring recitations of the azaan (Islamic call to prayer) distilled into pure tone, as extension of and departure from Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a Room. With the participation of vocalists from varying traditions of melody (and ma'qam) across the Islamic world, the artist asks how sound can convey cultural knowledge despite the fixity of text and create sacred space in the process.

Exhibition history

Vocalists:
  • Zain Alam
  • Tanais Nandini Islam (NYC)
  • Nadine Shaanta Murshid (NYC)
  • Dayatra Amber (Buffalo)
  • Zaimah Habeeb (Buffalo)


Other select installation, performance & video work2017-2024
2022
2021

2020
  • Fundraiser for South Asian Resiliency Arts Fund (remote), India Center Foundation, NYC


2019


2018

2017

“By the declining day, man is in a state of loss indeed.” (103:1-2)
زین العابدین