“Breaching Towards Other Futures” Through Divination and Myth

Wearing an identical headpiece and white robe, Allahyari entered the room. In a low and steady voice, she invoked the folkloric jinni known as Aisha Qandisha: “She’s the monstrous Other, the dark goddess, the possessive Jinn, the divine persona.” Though sometimes depicted as a dangerous spirit known for seducing and consuming men, Aisha Qandisha serves as a figure of possibility for the Brooklyn-based artist. According to Allahyari, this potential derives from Aisha Qandisha’s powers: “When she possesses humans, she creates a crack on their bodies. She lays them open, open to an outside. The only way to stay sane when possessed by her is to participate with her.” Allahyari channeled the jinni’s ability to not only draw the bodies of the audience to her but also lead them somewhere new: “As I crack each human body open, you open the path. We enter, enter, enter.” This “embracing of monstrosity” contributes to the artists’ larger mission of celebrating feminine and queer narratives. “[I]t was important to create this character, this female character who sees the future,” Fahimi explained in a Q&A following the performance.

The metaphysical crack imparted by the supernatural being of Aisha Qandisha finds a parallel in a practice of divination called geomancy, or ilm al-raml, which translates literally as the “science of the sand.” Projected on the stage, a black-and-white clip of a finger tracing a spiraling circle in sand gave an inkling of what was to come. In front of the stage, Fahimi began to dig through strips of sand laid out on the theater floor. She unearthed the first of a series of translucent, plastic cut-outs. Each “door” glinted under the light as she propped them up one by one, revealing a variation of indecipherable dots and lines. Meanwhile, Allahyari dutifully recited the divinations corresponding to each pattern, or “house.”

Allahyari also offered deeper understanding to the readings by pausing to recount personal stories, such as an adolescent memory of watching the 1997 movie Titanic during a summer of drought in Tehran. Comparing who gets to be rescued in the film (namely, the first-class passengers) with the city’s rationing of its water supply, the 13-year-old Allahyari first realized how natural catastrophes expose economic and social inequality. “Because catastrophe is political and uneven, survival is political and uneven,” she stated. This revelation bears out nowhere more clearly than in the context of immigration and migration. As Fahimi brushed away the sand from the Ninth Door to the House of Travel, she read from a sheet of paper: “We were heading to the West. The entrance was on fire.” Here, she alluded to the real-life experience of having her initial visa application denied while attempting to travel from Montreal, where she currently resides, to New York for this very performance. Allahyari confirmed the incident, reciting verbatim from the official document sent by the US Embassy.

With the remaining few doors, Fahimi handed the predictions to audience members to share aloud. “In the House of Wind, I see the abolishment of the oppressor,” one woman read, following the unearthing of the Fourteenth Door. At the conclusion of the Sixteenth Door, another woman proclaimed: “In the house of soil, our destination is open. All directions are clear.” The increasingly optimistic readings, sourced from Fahimi’s own practice of geomancy, inspired some prospect of hope. Allahyari closed out the performance with words of defiance: “We have entered sixteen times, and we continue to enter. We will enter the borders, dreams, nightmares and, most importantly, the future.”

Mimi Wong is a New York desk editor of ArtAsiaPacific.

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