Flesh and Blood

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Known for his gritty, pain-inflicting endurance performances, Dr. Abdullah M. I. Syed transformed the rose, a desirable cultural and spiritual material symbolizing love, purity, soul, and melancholia in South Asian cultures, into a bloody pulp to bring attention to the deteriorating conditions of life in the Islamic world as a result of internal and external bloody conflicts. The ‘dematerialization’ of the rose into an abject and unstable substance of political mess further disrupted social norms and one’s senses, a reminder that all humans are ultimately made of flesh and blood and equally susceptible to and affected by violence. The performance questioned what one’s beliefs are, what are the constructs of one’s identity, and how they are represented in the media, popular culture, and social networks.