This summer, I’m trying something a little different. Every week, I’ll share one artwork by one artist that has stayed with me. Sometimes it made me laugh or feel something indescribable. Sometimes it challenged what I believed. Sometimes I simply couldn’t stop thinking about it.
These aren’t necessarily the “greatest” works of art. They’re the ones that sparked wonder for me.
I hope these stories help you discover a few artworks that stay with you, too.
See
Supha, Maïmouna Guerresi, 2008
Photo: Maïmouna Guerresi
Maïmouna Patrizia Guerresi is a photographer, sculptor, and video and installation artist. In 1991, Guerresi converted to Islăm. This inspired a new direction in her work, raising recurring themes of multicultural symbolism and feminine spirituality.
Supha hangs from the ceiling, draped in fabric. The white outfit is reminiscent of Muslim Sufi mystics, who through meditation and trance enter into direct contact with the divine. The figure's closed eyes and floating position suggest spiritual introspection and detachment from worldly concerns. The work's title is a word coined by the artist and combines sufi, a practitioner of Muslim mysticism, and safa, "purity" or "clarity" in Arabic. (Minneapolis Institute of Art)
80 × 16 1/8 × 19 11/16 in. Resin, Lycra, Iron
Story
The first time I saw Supha, it stopped me in my tracks. There it was floating feet above the floor beneath high ceilings pure and impossible. I couldn't look away. It was elegant, simple, mystical. A figure bound in yards of fabric, arms and legs wrapped as if swaddled or surrendered, held aloft by nearly invisible filament. And yet it felt effortless, not suspended, as if it simply belonged there, hovering above the ground. Up close, the details were startling: the subtle indication of vertebrae, a face smooth and serene. That tension between the grounded and the transcendent, the anatomical and the magical, is what made it so quietly irresistible to me.
Say
When you first see Supha, a human form suspended in air and wrapped in fabric, what is your immediate, gut-level response? Does it feel peaceful, unsettling, or something in between? Where do you feel that response in your body?
The figure's face is serene, even as the body is completely bound. What do you make of that pairing, total stillness in the expression and total constraint in the form? Does freedom and limitation always look the way we expect?
Many of us carry things we can't quite name (worries, grief, longing, love). If you could wrap one feeling in fabric and let it float, what would it be? What would it feel like to let it be held by something other than you?
Guerresi often works with figures in states of suspension or transformation...neither fully here nor fully there. Have you ever felt yourself in that kind of in-between place? What did it teach you?
Do
Float Something Heavy Find a small object that represents something you're carrying right now — a worry, a memory, a hope. Wrap it in soft fabric or tissue paper, then set it somewhere elevated (a shelf, a windowsill.) Let it rest above the floor. Spend a few quiet minutes looking at it there. Notice what shifts, if anything.
Meditation Find a comfortable position sitting or lying down. Close your eyes if that feels right.Take a slow breath in. And let it go. Imagine you are in a very tall, quiet room. The light is soft. The air is still. In the center of the room, a figure floats above the floor wrapped gently in layers of fabric, perfectly at peace. You can feel the stillness coming off of it like warmth. Now imagine that stillness moving toward you. It settles around your shoulders. Your hands. Your feet.
Is there something you've been carrying today? A worry, a to-do, a heavy feeling? Let yourself name it quietly.
Now imagine wrapping it gently, the way you'd wrap something precious, in soft cloth. And letting it float. Not gone. Just held by something other than you. Lifted.
Breathe in. Breathe out.You don't have to hold everything right now. You can just be here. Floating.
When you're ready, take one more deep breath and open your eyes.
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About the Artist: Maïmouna Guerresi
Maïmouna Patrizia Guerresi is a photographer, sculptor, and video and installation artist. In 1991, Guerresi converted to Islăm. This inspired a new direction in her work, raising recurring themes of multicultural symbolism and feminine spirituality.
Maïmouna Guerresi is an Italian-Senegalese artist who works in a hybrid embrace of ancestry from African, Asian and European cultures, following her conversion to Islam. Her sculptural, almost architectural creations fuse the face and limbs of the subject with the space, some levitating, others bodiless, their veils encompassing an empty expanse, heads floating overhead.
Guerresi presents an intimate perspective on human spirituality in relation to mysticism, shedding a new light on community and the soul, heavily influenced by Sufi traditions in Kenya, Sudan, and Morocco. Recurrent metaphors such as milk, light, the hijab, and nature create an awareness of the vital unifying qualities of Islamic spirituality. The images are delicate narratives with fluid sequencing, an appreciation of shared humanity beyond borders – psychological, cultural, and political.
In Maïmouna Guerresi’s works the narrative of the black Muslim female world recurs, a narrative that looks at the strength, royalty and beauty of African Muslim women, whose cultural contribution has often been forgotten by societies. Through references to her own double belonging, Guerresi proposes the ideaof a mixed identity as a necessary step on the path of human thought and life.
She has exhibited in prominent institutions such as the Venice Biennale (Italian pavilion), Documenta, National Museum of Bamako Mali, KIASMA museum of contemporary art of Helsinki, Bahrain National Museum, Sharjah Art Museum, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, I.M.A Institute du Monde Arabe, the 13th Cairo Biennale and the Lagos the Lagos Photo Festival, LOBA Leica Oskar Barnack Award, SCoP, Shanghai Center of Photography Shanghai, China and Gallery Gongbech, Jeju, South Korea, and Kyotographie, Kyoto, Japan, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto.
Her works are included in private and public collections worldwide, including the Boghossian Foundation, GAM Galleria Arte Moderna Achille Forti, Minneapolis Institute of Art, L.A.C.M.A Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of African, Contemporary Art Al Maaden, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, and Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.
This summer, I’m trying something a little different.Every week, I’ll share one artwork by one artist that has stayed with me. Sometimes it made me laugh or feel something indescribable. Sometimes it challenged what I believed. Sometimes I simply couldn’t stop thinking about it. These aren’t necessarily the “greatest” works of art. They’re the ones that sparked wonder for me. I hope these stories help you discover a few artworks that stay with you, too. Do you have Pareidolia? "Canface" by...
This summer, I’m trying something a little different.Every week, I’ll share one artwork by one artist that has stayed with me. Sometimes it made me laugh or feel something indescribable. Sometimes it challenged what I believed. Sometimes I simply couldn’t stop thinking about it. These aren’t necessarily the “greatest” works of art. They’re the ones that sparked wonder for me. I hope these stories help you discover a few artworks that stay with you, too. Kimiko Nishimori “I just want to do...
This summer, I’m trying something a little different.Every week, I’ll share one artwork by one artist that has stayed with me. Sometimes it made me laugh or feel something indescribable. Sometimes it challenged what I believed. Sometimes I simply couldn’t stop thinking about it. These aren’t necessarily the “greatest” works of art. They’re the ones that sparked wonder for me. I hope these stories help you discover a few artworks that stay with you, too. See Nimbus Palácio de Estoi, 2026,...
