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JAH Qube Art, Design & Fabrication Inc.

@jah_qube

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followers

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A Design-Build Public Art Studio
Founded by @javid_jah & @qubeinc
A collective of interdisciplinary BIPOC creatives
Based in Toronto, Canada

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Join us 7pm this Saturday @agakhanmuseum for a brief artist talk as part of @nuitblancheto

We will chat about the new piece #materiaprima and it's process, which draws on alchemy, sacred geometry and modular architecture.

As the sculpture sits like a flower on a pool of water, we drew inspiration from the Qur'anic ayah

وَجَعَلْنَا مِنَ ٱلْمَآءِ كُلَّ شَىْءٍ حَىٍّ ۖ

And We created from water every living thing.

Surah 21:30

I'm hoping to share reflections on how the sculpture attempts to embody this verse, and to hear thoughts about how this may resonate with you.

This particular sculpture means a lot to Alex and I as we reach the five year mark of our collaborative public art practice @jah_qube - we are super grateful for the opportunity to place our work in this contemplative site in-between the Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Center. 🙏🏽🙏🏽

#jahqube
#publicart
#nuitblanche2026 taken in Aga Khan Museum by @jah_qube

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15 days ago

"materia prima"

It's a Latin term in alchemy for prime matter - the concept that before we experience physical materials, a "cloud" of possibilities exist.. a vapor of potential, a dust of divine emanation

This sculpture is a contemplation of this primordial matter.. that even something as hidden as our soul has a form that illuminates.. and that this light is reflected in how we behave, what we do, how we treat each other.. you can't see and yet you glow with it

Maybe I go too deep with this stuff. But I definitely love the journey of making and sharing it. And the people that are along with me that believe it's worth making

This one is special. I hope to see you nuit blanche Oct 3 for the official opening @nuitblancheto @agakhanmuseum

Much respect to my partner @qubeinc for his tenacity and dedication to making incredible things.. it's an honor to work with you bro

Love to @danilodeluxo and @ayseipekdokuyan assisting with the installation

Love

#materiaprima
#jahqube taken in Aga Khan Museum by @jah_qube

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24 days ago

Coming soon but been here forever

@nuitblancheto
@agakhanmuseum

#jahqube
@jah_qube by @jah_qube

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a month ago

"100 Samosas a Day"
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72"x72"x24"
Reclaimed wood, stainless steel, LED lights
Wall mount permanent sculpture, SkyTrain station Surrey, BC
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"Never hurt a Samosa by saying NO, they too have fillings inside."
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Humour fills the heart with light, just like a samosa fills the belly with joy. For generations, the samosa has been an icon for my family. As the eldest member of our family, my maternal grandfather “Bapa” represents the legacy of this South Asian and Middle Eastern tradition. At 94 years, the simple and repetitive process of making Samosas is a key function of his everyday life, keeping his engine oiled and mind alert. I remember being in awe of his dedication as I drove him around Surrey all day, dropping nearly 100 samosas off to various small Indian grocery stores - some only taking 3 or 5 samosas at a time. The care he put into each one is reflected in each exchange - the warmth of the transaction and the relationships that were nurtured made his samosa business feel more like community service. It's this wonderful combination of compassion and creativity that I learn from my family’s love affair with the samosa - and my motivation to make public art is founded on that very same approach.
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A SAMOSA FOR THE WORLD
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In one sense each public art piece I design is an offering of a samosa for the world. Its pure triangular geometry expresses unity and balance, speaking a universal language which is so fundamental to our sculptures. The carefully folded origami of the samosa wrap represents our dedication to craft, years of experience honing fabrication techniques to make elegant, durable and safe geometric objects in public space. And the filler - the secret mixture of ingredients hidden within each samosa - is the art of creating depth within a sculpture, revealing layers of material and space through architectural composition. It is these three characteristics of the samosa that are key strategies in making successful public art - geometric wonder, precision craftsmanship and the sense of surprise - that are working in concert to orchestrate the flow of this proposal for a pair of iconic sculptures inside Fleetwood’s new Skytrain Station."
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#jahqube taken in Surrey B.C by @jah_qube

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6 months ago

"100 Samosas a Day"
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72"x72"x16"
Stainless steel, bronze & reclaimed wood
2024
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Finalist proposal for a series of wall mount sculptures at SkyTrain station in Surrey, Vancouver BC
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As described by Javid: "This is a story inspired by my 94 year old grandfather (Bapa) who makes 100 samosas a day and hand-delivers them to local shops in Surrey. He has taught me that the samosa symbolizes hard-work and persistence - two necessary characteristics for immigrants struggling to make a living in a new country.
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The name samosa is derived from its geometry, as seh from Farsi word sambosag denotes “threeness”. As an architect, I find it interesting to imagine this three-ness in three dimensions, analyzing how the samosa filling bestows the pure geometry of a triangle with a belly. Once upon a time, the great architect-engineer Buckminister Fuller shared this interest in the geometry of the samosa as he visited India to conduct his geodesic experiments. He recognized that the inflated triangular geometry represents how matter behaves in the natural world, as a three-cornered object in space and time becomes a tetrahedron. Regarded as a one of the fundamental building blocks of matter, the tetrahedron is a four-sided pyramid that can be multiplied to form a Space Frame - one of the strongest structural assemblies formed through making .. ahem, well thousands of samosas a day. Imagining an universe of Samosas captures both the reality that there are infinite ways to fill the pastry (its cultural diversity) as well as the metaphysical thought that the filling of the samosa is like a hidden reality.
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From a commuter stand-point, the space frame is a mirror for self-reflection as one peers into the infinite, engaging viewers to question not just what lies beneath the skin of the Samosa, but perhaps beneath the material world itself. These are the questions of our ancestors - the questions my Bapa asks me all the time - which I hope to inspire in others through an iconic symbol of South Asian culture.
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More to come in next post showing the other samosa (one for each platform)
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#jahqube
#samosa
#publicartsculpture
#surreybc
#sacredgeometry taken in Surrey B.C by @jah_qube

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6 months ago

"sapientia"
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30'x30'x12'
Stainless steel, gold, led light, concrete
Brampton, Ontario, Canada
2024
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This proposal was a submission as a finalist for a competition to produce a permanent memorial sculpture for the late Premier of Ontario and Brampton born William "Billy" Davis.
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A balancing act between transparency and reflection, the sculpture gives life to the original meaning of sapience - a wisdom embodied by Davis that harmonized voices instead of polarizing them. The cyclical nature of the spiraling torus invites contemplation and repose as its reflections and shadows deploy an orbit of harmonic proportions on the site.
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Famous for puffing cigars while listening to Jays games in an ear piece during parliament, Davis was a charismatic character that instituted training focused college education and the Ministry of the Environment in Ontario during his tenure.
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Flip through to see some screenshots from our final proposal submission. To be clear, the criteria for this competition was to celebrate me Davis without including any likeness to his physical being, given another statue of a white guy in today's world only serves to perpetuate racial supremacy and reminds us of the settler colonial project that continues to rear it's ugly face worldwide, particularly currently in Palestine, Lebanon and now Iran.
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Lead Artist | Designer: Javid Jah @javid_jah
Lead Fabricator | Installer: Alex Akbari, Qube Inc. @qubeinc
Mentee artist: Francis Pratt @francismakes
Graphic design: Carol Ann Apilado @carolannapilado
Structural Engineering: Michael Hopkins, Blackwell
Supply and Cutting: Tom Loach, CNC Profiles
Forming: Brampton Plate
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#sapience
#torus
#sacredgeometry
#publicartsculpture
#jahqube taken in Brampton, Ontario by @jah_qube

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6 months ago

"Upcycle: Message in a Bottle"
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456 reused plastic water bottles, drawings/messages on paper from the public, aluminum, float docks, solar lights, 3D printed components
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14'x16'x'9'
Harbor Square, Lake Ontario, Toronto Canada
2024
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Commissioned by Waterfront Toronto
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"Ever wish you found a message in a bottle? This floating sculpture contains hundreds of messages from around the world concerning our key life source - water. Arranged in a sacred architecture reflecting the geometry of water molecules, the messages are stored in upcycled plastic water bottles. Individually, they describe our countless intimate connections to water; as a unified sculpture, they are a call to action to dismantle systems that prevent indigenous communities from accessing safe water, from Turtle Island to Gaza.
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Jah Qube is a design-build studio inspired by sacred encounters in public spaces. Founded by artist-architect Javid Jah and maker Alex Akbari, the studio collaborated with Anishinaabe Knowledge Practitioner Dr Debby Danard of the Three Fires Teaching Lodge to develop Upcycle."
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@javid_jah
Alex Akbari @qubeinc
Collaborating artist - Dr Debby Danard, Aanishinaabe Knowledge Practitioner
Community Outreach - Skye @skye_blu
Graphic Design - Carol Ann Apilado @carolannapilado
Videography - The Edisons @theedisons.ca
Engineering @blackwellengineers
Competition rfp by @waterfront.to
@wonka_aka_stillkids project assistant
@bioimmersive app design
Photography @aswilliamson & @michaelngynn
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#floatingsculpture
#jahqube
#waterislife
#messageinabottle taken in Toronto, Ontario by @jah_qube

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7 months ago

The Sphere of Mars
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aluminium
90"x90"90"
2021
Located along the Red Sea @jeddahcircuit in Saudi Arabia
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The World of Spheres is a series of sculptures exploring the symbolism of the visible planets.
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Each sculpture is based on the cosmology of 13th century Andalusian scholar ibn al-’Arabi, giving form to 9 stages on his Chart of Creation (based on the 28 phases of the moon).
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Fabricated out of aluminum, the sculptures bridge modern astronomy with traditional Islamic cosmology.
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The geometry of each sculpture references its orbital period, while the aluminum faces are perforated with the divine names associated with each successive “heaven.” Over a 15 year period, Mars forms an 8 petalled flower in the sky from our perspective on earth. Thus we used a cube -octahedron to represent it's form.
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The symbolism of each planet is also well documented in traditional alchemy, which was a major feature of ibn-Arabi’s scholarship. According to Hermetic alchemy, each planet was once associated with a metal, highlighting the infamous saying, “as above, so below.”
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Each planet is painted the color of its corresponding earthly metal when it is oxidized - Mars is red, like rusted Iron. It is perforated with the Divine name القاهرة al-qahirah, which means the Victorious/the Overpowering. This is the original name of Cairo, Egypt, whose construction began when Mars appeared on the Eastern horizon according to Fatimid legacy.
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@qubeinc fabrication
@javid_jah design
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Production team
@wonka_aka_stillkids
@theedisons.ca
Aaron Lawless
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Drafting
@carolannapilado
Engineering
@blackwellengineers
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Curator @umbereene
Art Direction @therealswizzz
Good Intentions
Sela & FRP
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#jahqube
#islamiccosmology
#cubeoctahedron
#alqahirah
#jeddahart taken in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia by @jah_qube

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7 months ago

talisman
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36"x36"x36"
bronze, polished stainless steel, aluminum, LED light
Suspended sculpture
2022
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The word “talisman” is derived from telasma طِلَسْم in Arabic , which can be defined as “miraculous work.” In the world of traditional cosmology - a lineage dating back to Hermes Trismegistus - a talisman is a “symbol into which something of the power of its prototype has entered, the symbol having been fashioned in a particular cosmic situation (constellation) and with a corresponding spiritual concentration.” (Titus Burckhardt, 1967)
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In lay terms, this sculpture operates as a talisman, consecrating the essential principles of the zodiac through form and material. The 12 star tunnels are perforated with the vibrations of their associated elements - Fire (triangle), Earth, (square), Air (circle) and Water (pentagon). The sculpture acts as a tool of correspondence between the visible form and invisible prototype of the “houses” of the zodiac - the set of constellations through which the Sun travels during the course of the Solar year. All that remains is a theurgic action on the part of the viewer to enliven the talisman, fermenting the transformation between the invisible influence of the constellation and its condensation in the corporeal state of the human being.
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Originally displayed @culturalgoodsgallery in Toronto, this suspended and illuminated sculpture is for sale. DM for inquiries.
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@javid_jah
@qubeinc
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Photography by @theedisons.ca
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#jahqube
#suspendedsculpture
#talisman
#zodiacsigns
#bronzesculpture taken in Toronto, Ontario by @jah_qube

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7 months ago

"The Sphere of Saturn"
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painted aluminum
90"x76"x80"
2021
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Permanent sculpture on the @jeddahcircuit as part of the inaugural Formula 1 in Saudi Arabia
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Part of a series of 9 sculptures along the Red Sea, each expressing the symbolism of the visible planets inspired by the cosmology of #ibnarabi
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"As the last visible planet, Saturn is believed to represent the limits of our imagination, yet simultaneously the spark of the illuminated intellect, welcoming the seeker to the unseen dimensions of their journey. The sculpture is perforated with the divine name الرب which ibn arabi associated with this sphere. It is believed to host Lote Tree of the Furthest Boundary - Sidrat al-Muntaha mentioned in sura 53 verse 14 of the Holy Qur'an - سِدْرَة ٱلْمُنْتَهَىٰ . This calligraphy is also cut out of the faces of the sculpture, which are designed to express the rings of Saturn. The white color expresses the alchemical correspondence of Saturn to the metal Lead. In antiquity, each Planet was a macrocosmic expression of an Earthly metal; when Lead oxidizes, it turns white."
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@javid_jah
@qubeinc
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Production team @theedisons.ca @wonka_aka_stillkids and Aaron Lawless
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Curated by @umbereene
Art Direction by @therealswizzz
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#publicartsculpture
#sacredgeometry
#saturn
#islamiccosmology taken in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia by @jah_qube

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7 months ago

Process footage of assembling the largest sculpture I've worked on in my life
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Big thanks to everyone involved it's been over a year in the making
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@jah_qube @qubeinc footage by @theedisons.ca @porschecanada
@sixpennyarchitectural calligraphy by @_medeio_
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"Lumen" tells the story of the alchemy of Porsche through the continuous ring of the #ouroboros
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#vierendeeltruss
#steelfabrication
#jahqube
#javidjah
#publicart
#sacredgeometry
#alchemicaldesign
#toronto
#permanentsculpture by @jah_qube

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a year ago

studio models
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The main thing I've learned over the last few years is that I should probably buy a 3d printer 😅
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@jah_qube
#rfplife by @jah_qube

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2 years ago