Ethiopian healing scrolls and art healing scrolls

The healing scrolls from Ethiopia, are made to heal a person from a serious illness. They are an hybrid conception of christian and magical cooperation as an effective healing amulet. This amulet is as big as the ill person wearing it and covered with religious fragmented texts, prayers and talisman-images. Healing scrolls are a strong protection for the body and the soul and the whole thing acts as a shield to the evil.    

The ethiopian healing scrolls have been a source of inspiration for two of my works

On Nature (Περί Φύσεως)

Here the religious texts and prayers have been replaced by the Empedocle's poem On Nature about the four classical elements. It participated at the exhibition Material Links at MoCA Shanghai, in China on 2008 and two years later at the exhibition Arcadia In Situ at the Arcadic museum of Art and History, in Greece.

Three healing scrolls, is one of the seven in situ ritual installations of the exhibition “Whispering Reeds in Woven Gardens" presented at Imaret Kavala on October 2014 and integrating the restorative elements of the Islamic garden with the protective power of the written word in Arabic script.

In Islamic culture script is considered to have magical force and the written word provides supernatural protection.

My whispering reeds - which are both ornamental amulets and writing implements - are inscribed in Arabic with the verses of the Syrian poet Adonis, offering in this way their protection through art.

                                                                                                                       

http://kemeap.blogspot.gr/2014/10/whispering-reeds-in-woven-gardens.html

https://vimeo.com/107384309