the vast void - a silent art creation
a single edition. hundreds of original works. one silent conversation between language and form.
the vast void in the wide little (الفراغ الشاسع في القليل الواسع) is a one-of-a-kind art book - a museum-grade work in which a philosophical manuscript and hundreds of original hand-drawn pieces are bound into a single, exhibit-ready form.
across seventeen chapters and 136 pages of varying sizes, it holds 206 original ink drawings, 33 detached hand-drawn works, and 18 prints - every page drawn, written, and signed by hand.
base
the welcome, inscribed on the book's base - a single handmade original, four years in the making, its seventeen chapters rising in scale like a ziggurat. an invitation to contemplate, not simply to read.
the end of the beginning
نهاية البداية
the dedication and the founding idea. written for saman's late brother, salar, it holds the book's central philosophy — that every ending is a beginning in disguise, and that the vast void of loss becomes the space the whole work moves through.
thought one:
captured moments
لحظات مصوّرة
one image a day. a practice saman began in 2013 — choosing a single photograph to hold an entire day — and what it teaches about memory, attention, and the small details we let slip past.
thought two:
connection
تواصل
reaching out. the daily habit of contacting people he's lost touch with, and the belief that true connection asks nothing in return — a gift we give ourselves before we give it to anyone else.
thought three:
forgiveness
تسامح
letting go. forgiveness as release rather than concession — a lesson saman traces to his father's words after his brother's death: no blame on anyone; what happened happened, and we must forgive
thought four:
trust
ثقة
holding the line. trust, honesty and integrity as saman learned them in old baghdad — and the quiet cost of refusing to compromise them in a world that came to measure a person by what they own.
thought five:
silence
صمت
the power of silence. why saman meets noise and conflict with restraint — silence not as absence or retreat, but as a conscious presence that steadies the self, and gives this whole practice its name.
thought six:
true wealth
الغنى والفقر
poverty measured not in money but in the heart — shaped by early loss and his father's words: money beneath your feet lifts you; money above your head crushes you.
thought seven:
flow
الانسيابية
a way of working drawn from driving the emirati desert, where the summit is reached not by force but by smooth, adaptive movement — letters that begin as one form and become another, every mistake opening a door.
thought eight:
joy or sorrow
فرح أم حزن
saman's work carries no fixed feeling; each viewer reads it through their own life, finding joy or grief — and in doing so meets not the work, but themselves.
baghdad is dying
تحتضر بغداد
his mother's words on returning in 2019, rendered as a work of the city tilting into darkness — and saman's own question: is baghdad dying, or is he, in refusing to let its older values go?
saman
سامان
who he is. born in baghdad in 1967 into a kurdish-iraqi family of unusual openness — and the cultured, sheltered childhood that shaped the way he would come to see, and draw, the world.
silent art
الفن الصامت
the name. work that first reads as abstract or architectural line, yet hides words and messages in a script saman invented — meant to be uncovered slowly, in silence.
the script i invented
الخط الذي ابتكرته
how saman built a free-form arabic script from the roots of classical letters but bound to no tradition — each letter redrawn as structure and symbol, a language of freedom and individuality.
the iceberg
الجبل الجليدي
where it began. the accidental first drawing, made on a work trip in his fifties — an iceberg whose clean white surface hides a tangle of writing beneath, the image that became the seed of everything after.
architecture & art
العمارة والفن
where the architect and the artist meet — engineering lending the work its balance and structure, philosophy lending it depth, until form and meaning can no longer be separated.
the ending
الخاتمة
a note to the reader: that a passion is the essence of a person, not a pastime — and an encouragement to find it, show it without fear, and add something of your own to the world.