Trained in artistic instruction at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, artist Muhammadi Zuhal Karamanli educated students and professors on the ancient and traditional art in which she specializes.
Karamanli's works include both original miniatures and embellishments of calligraphy. In the Turkish art scene, Karamanli is known as a "Muzehibe" - the title for artists who focus primarily in the "Tezhip" art form.
"[Tezhip] has been taught in the Topkapi Palace continuously for five hundred years," Art and Art History Professor Eva Hoffman said. "It is a very specialized enterprise."
After arriving in America eight years ago, Karamanli said that she typically works either for patrons of calligraphers or calligraphers themselves. "People buy calligraphy and want me to embellish it," she said. "I work for a commission."
Karamanli said that, although the vast majority of calligraphers are male, more and more Muzehibes are women.
"Maybe in the future we'll take over [calligraphy]," she joked.
Sixteen of Karamanli's pieces were displayed around the room, most of which are clearly influenced by Islam, though some portray Turkish-influenced depictions of dragons.
Karamanli said that during the modernization of Turkey, Tezhip was "almost completely wiped out."
Within the Topkapi Palace, however, the tradition was kept alive and allowed for an eventual resurgence of the art form throughout Turkey.
"I'm glad that it isn't a dying art in Turkey," she said. "I'm enjoying keeping the tradition alive."
Some of her works, whether embellishments or miniatures, were pictorial expressions of Koranic verses. For example, one piece used the opening verse of the Koran, the Bismillah, and crafted it into the shape of a bird.
Other works portrayed dragons, which Karamanli said are often seen as heroes' adversaries in Western cultures. In Turkish and Ottoman culture, dragons are seen as good luck. According to Karamanli, some people believe that if they purchase artwork of eyeless dragons and then draw in the eyes themselves, a wish may be granted. Another one of Karamanli's pieces featured was the Tale of the Nightingale and the White Rose - a set of two pictures which, Karamanli said, showed a nightingale that loved a rose so much, it sang to the flower until it was poked in the heart by the rose's thorn. The nightingale's blood then stained the rose red.
"[This is] why the red rose symbolizes love," Karamanli said.
She also presented the audience with two Shamas, or flower-like images. Karamanli said that while one of them had a small empty space in the middle, it was drawn in the traditionally correct way. The second image had no empty spaces.
Karamanli said she was inspired to draw the second one this way because she was pregnant at the time and wanted to incorporate her own personal feelings into the work.
Toward the conclusion of her presentation, Karamanli said that she would like to create exhibitions involving flowers in the future. "We have to get a more personal connection with nature," she said. "Otherwise, there will be no hesitation to destroy it."
Approximately 30 students and professors attended Karamanli's presentation in the Koppelman Gallery.
Karamanli's most recent exhibitions include 2004 shows at Brandeis University, Colgate University, and at the Anne C. Fisher Gallery in Washington, D.C.
