Thousand Prayers

Thousand Prayers is a performance and installation lasting four consecutive days, during which Marwan Hemma wrote Al Adhaan - the call to prayer - a thousand times. This chant is intimately linked to his religious and linguistic culture. Repetition and physical pain permeate the installation, constructed of layers of paper laid in a circle around the performer. The installation is in a state of flux during this given time, bearing material witness to these thousand gestures. The last sheets are written in the performer's own blood.