She Who Sees the Unknown: Reimagining the Jinn Figure in Oddity and Wonder

She Who Sees the Unknown, by Morehshin Allahyari, debuted at her last solo exhibitionThe Majlis al-Jinn, (Fragment Gallery, NYC, 2021) briefs a half decade retrospective of her “re-figuring the Jinn figure.” The hybrid human/non-human figures often visioned in symmetrical postures and appearances, elude the logic of either/or in favour of the neither/nor of non-binary beings; whether captured as monstrous or angelic, animal or human, they queer the authoritative worldings of normative imagination. Speculative in their form and fictive in rendition, mirroring and reversion are applied in recasting the Jinn figures echoing verses into multiverses. Speculative in their form and fictive in rendition, mirroring and reversion are applied in recasting the Jinn figures echoing verses into multiverses.

By animating the fabulous figures such as Aisha Qandisha, Ya’jooj Ma’jooj, The Laughing Snake, Huma Kabous, Qareen I & Qareen II, in She Who Sees the Unknown, Morehshin respires breaching dystopian pasts into speculative worlds, yet in oddity and wonder. The fabulous power of these figures blot out everything about the later course of re-figuring the disastrous endings; the unknown order is yet to be passed upon, before the catastrophes of the timeless time strike from the unseeable horizons. The surrounding visitors of this gathering of the Jinns recall a future, alas, hidden to the archeologists of the aftertime.