SLEEPERS OF THE CAVE

Collaborative Project by Iqra Tanveer & Ehsan Ul Haq

Commissioned by Islamic arts Biennale 02 – 'All That Is In Between’,  2025.

It is within the walls of the caves where time presents itself in its full splendor, playing hide and seek, oscillating in waves, as if stagnation and motion could exist together. It is perhaps only possible in a cave, that the night and day are an eclipse to each other…Timelessness is the gift of the cave.

The project ‘sleepers of the cave’ is an inquiry of a story mentioned in The Quran from Chapter 18 Al-Kahf (The Cave). The parable speaks of a group of young men from an ancient past that took refuge in a cave to escape religious persecution and the oppressive political climate of their time. The story does not delve into the exact date and time; neither does it unveil the definite number of companions in the cave. It instead gives a more abstract narrative of the story of young men in the cave with their dog, the cosmic setting and their ultimate wakeup call. These young men along with a dog are known to have slept through centuries in a cave are miraculously made to wake up in an altogether new time and era that struggles with the ideas of resurrection and life after death.

The “sleepers of the cave” is an interesting parable that delves with ideas of what a cave, sleeping and wakefulness could symbolize, and their resonance to our current geopolitical climate. Taking this story as our departure point the project resonates to a sense of urgency, a moment in time that speculates a possible paradigm shift, a wakeup call that reminds the social and ecological fragmentation, a climatic catastrophe that surfaces with every rising and setting of the day.

* Image, Courtesy of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation, photo Marco Cappelletti