jad dahshan

What started out as a doodle in a small, pocket-sized sketchbook in 2024, and later became a mural the size of several hundred pocket-sized sketchbooks at the beginning of 2026 with @outofframe.amman and @dalalmitwally , now finds itself finally settled in this A3 drawing at @jacaranda.images . Somewhere along the way, i heard @samah.hijawi speak about Saturn in terms of stones: cold, hard, and heavy. At another stage, @nahlatabbaa lent me a book about the numbers and the sacred, and I learnt more about magic squares and how they corresponded to planets. These and other occurences beyond my knowledge led to this final image solidifying like hot magma into rock. I adapted the motif from one I used in a drawing I had done in 2022 or 2023, pictured in the last slide, featuring a volcano -this same drawing is the one I would crochet into a tapestry later on, and although I used a crochet hook instead of loom weights like the ones in this drawing, there is some parallel there, both crafts watched over by Saturn. The Arabic title for this drawing points to Saturn in Aries, where it currently sits uncomfortably, but i find the lava imagery to be the most optimistic way of looking at this transit, imagining the slow metamorphosis of the earth's burning blood into solid, stable stone.