Scheherazade

This hand-transcription in microscript of The Arabian Nights, traces the stories told by Scheherazade in over 10,000 fragments of papers painted in shades of indigo and crimson and edged in gold. The piece is a literal and figurative “magic carpet” whose central panel is bathed in the blood of the book’s unfortunate heroines and cloaked in the mysterious glow of night.

King Shahryar resolves to marry a different virgin every night and behead her the next morning to revenge his first wife who was unfaithful to him.

Scheherazade is the Persian storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights who saves her own life and that of many other women by telling King Shahryar a story every night, but never finishing it by day break. The king becomes addicted to the stories and Scheherazade’s life depends on telling the stories that never end at dawn.

Title: Scheherazade

Size: 96″ x 102″ x 4″ (w x h x d)
Materials: paper, ink
Date: 2016
Photographed by: Thomas Little