Page 45 - Art at Mayfair Hotel Tunneln

Martin Erik Andersen, Aya Sofya. 75 x 60 cm
The description of Aya Sofya, written by Martin Erik Andersen: The title Aya Sofya refers to the Hagia Sophia Mosque in Istanbul, which was originally built as a Byzantine church. Both as a Christian church and as a mosque, architecture has been the framework for a series of artistic conflicts in relation to the image ban/iconoclasm. The silver is both a half-emptied blurred mirror, and a kind of inversion of the icon’s silver settings. The silver is laid on the back of oriental rugs. The carpet art is one of the strongest positive articulations of Islamic culture of the image ban, expressed in geometry and patterns often worn by stylized floral motifs. To the left of the silver carpet is a small geometrically carved drawing in the silver which reproduces the geometry of a leaf of the plant Alchemilla Mollis, also called the robe (or Lion’s foot). In the Middle Ages, it was thought that the plant’s ability to condense the morning mist into small water pearls on its leaves symbolized Mary’s tears for the world. The drawing may have a root in Samuel Colman’s geometry textbook Nature’s Harmonic Unity.
Martin Erik Andersen (1964 DK) lives and works in Copenhagen. He studied at The Fine Arts Academy in Cario, Egypt and at The Royal Danish Academy of Art where he later worked as professor. He has exhibited his works at Holstebro Art Museum, DK; Horsens Art Museum, DK, and Gl. Holtegaard, DK. He has received the Thorvaldsen Medal, Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen’s Grant, and the Eckersberg Medal.
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