Prayer rug

This work was created in response to the April 2003 invasion of Iraq by the US led coalition. Part of the motivation in making the work was the anger and frustration that the same sort of carnage and death as had happened in the same region twelve years before could be repeated. The despair felt by the artist was heightened by the fact that her own daughter had died accidentally only a few years before and Bot felt anguish that other mothers would suffer a similar tragedy. In 'Prayer rug' the background of the image represents the landscape and is symbolised using a personally developed pictogram that stands for tussocks of grass found around the artist's local region, but which are also used for suggesting the landscape of the wider world. The gradation and changes in the colour suggest the huge variety of land across the earth and the different gardens (or cultures) created by both man and nature. Across part of the landscape is thrown a symbolic Muslim prayer rug, the creased and crumpled form suggesting more variations in the topography of the world. Growing beneath, through and on the rug are more of the grassland symbols, surrounded by lighter patches of colour indicating different areas, lands or peoples which are nonetheless overlaid by common cultural or spiritual beliefs. While the prayer rug blankets part of the land and the colours between the land and rug are very different, they use the same ideograms and are made up of the same small marks suggesting commonality between what on the surface seems to be diametrically opposed cultures or values. Bot's drawing indicates the universally shared characteristics of human existence. The technique used by Bot to make these marks is reminiscent of the warp and weft of the traditional Persian prayer rug and also the small tesserae of early Byzantine Christian mosaics further emphasizing shared values and experiences.