| When I first heard the quotation, one part stood out to me: “He is preceded in every step He taketh by an army of unforeseen calamities, while in His rear follow legions of agonizing sorrows”. I decided to take a systemic approach to understanding this quote, and present my interpretation of its implications to society with abstract shapes, as you can see in this drawing. So, to give a brief explanation of the different lines and arrows, the blue lines are meant to represent the spread of the message of Baha’u’llah. As you can see, it is hindered by opposition to the faith, which is shown by the black arrows. They may subject the faith to a lot of hardship and attempt to eradicate it. However, these cruel actions are followed by enormous sorrow and grief to be formed in people’s hearts that eventually lead people to turn to the faith for answers. This then allows Baha'u'llah's message to spread further than ever, leading to a brighter future, as you can see in the top half of the paper, as opposed to the darker bottom half. This drawing was based in part from similar drawings that I had made a week prior to making this one. When I first heard the quotation, I thought of the faith being hindered by the foes of the faith, only for their tragic actions to be memorialised later by future Bahai societies. This idea eventually evolved into the drawing you can see now. I also want to mention how I wanted people to feel after seeing this drawing. I did not want them to feel despair, but hope; perhaps that tests endured would only lead to a brighter outcome on the other side. But mainly, I wanted it to expand people’s view of the world and the faith, rather than narrowing it. I tried to make the image abstract enough so that it could still be up for interpretation by the viewer, but keep it based on the principles of the faith. I wanted it to spur meaningful conversations on deep concepts, such as the suffering of Baha’u’llah, which was the topic that all our work revolved around. |