This 11m-high mural commission is part of Leighton House Museum's restoration project
Courtesy of Leighton House Museum and the artist
Hidden in a reasonably unassuming house in London's upmarket borough of Kensington and Chelsea is the Leighton House Museum, a wunderkammer of Islamic art and architecture. Now the traditional Middle Eastern decor is getting a permanent contemporary addition. As part of the building's major £7.8m refurbishment, which began in 2008 and is due to be completed this year, an 11m-high, hand-painted mural by the Iranian artist Shahrzad Ghaffari will decorate the walls of a new helical staircase.
The work, titled
Oneness, is made up of turquoise, calligraphic brushstrokes that form a central motif inspired by the traditional designs of the Middle Eastern tiles in Leighton House Museum’s Arab Hall. Its spiralling form adopts the helical structure of the staircase. A fusion of Eastern and Western culture, the words will weave into an abstract form, drawing from the 13th-century Persian poetry of Rumi. The painting also reflects the pattern of DNA as the calligraphy sweeps into a double helix. The commission was part of a crowdfunding campaign, run by the UK charity Art Fund, which has seen the public donate £26,538 towards the centrepiece.