Ricerca
Touching Fragments: Sensorial Codes and the Afterlives of Safavid Carpets
Azar Emami Pari
A fragment of a Safavid vase carpet—preserved today in Berlin as Inv. I.8/72 (CC BY-SA 4.0)—shows how its quarter-form asks for a method beyond completion, prompting us to consider what knowledge survives precisely because it was cut. Image link: https://recherche.smb.museum/detail/1521008
This project explores how fragmented Safavid carpets (16th–17th c.) operate as sensorial codes—archives of touch, ritual memory, and epistemic dislocation. Drawing on Persian cosmology and the colonial afterlives of these fragments in European museums, the research proposes a new theory of coding that is tactile, affective, and historically contingent. Instead of digital abstraction or linguistic inscription, these fragments communicate through loss, gesture, and devotional rupture. Situated at the intersection of Islamic material culture, feminist epistemology, and postcolonial museology, this project aligns with Lise-Meitner-Gruppe’s mission to rethink the nature and agency of "coded objects."