Geometry/Mosque

Once you cross over to Turkey, the aesthetic takes a radical change, also representative of the religion and culture it exists within. Statues and artistic representations of human figures are almost non-existent in mosques or traditional art forms and instead we see geometry, form and symmetry as the main components of art and architecture.

If art in the Christian church is supposed to remind its congregants of the divine, and there is no figural expression in Islam, that brings about the question: how to accomplish that same feeling in a mosque? Ottoman artists and architects would turn to space and form, colour and pattern to represent what is considered to be the unrepresentable. I have heard it said that the ever-repeating patterns are supposed to represent God's infiniteness, and show us that infinite pattern takes us beyond the visible, material world. Or that geometry is the perfect fusion between art and science. Regardless of its intentionality, the effect is stunning.