Paper short abstract:

Dreams and Miracles materialize in specific ways in the everyday life of Shia. For artists, art become a mediator between the person and the divine which this paper will explore and propose an extension to Gell's agency of art.

Paper long abstract:

A lot of Shia experience religious dreams and miracles on regular basis. Despite the centrality of these experiences among many Shia communities around the world, very little has been explored ethnographically. During fieldwork, many of my Shia research participants in Kuwait defined miracles as God and Ahl Al-Bayt's way to communicate with human and others state it as a form of reward for their worship and religious service. Ahl Al-Bayt here means the household of prophet Mohammed. Understanding the world of oneiric experiences in religion will provide valuable insights to the type of connections fostered between the human and the divine. In this paper, I will introduce how one artist in Kuwait experience miracles through her art and how this challenged my perception as a researcher in terms of the senses invloved.

The question that guides this paper is "who actually has the agency?" Through one example of a statue and its maker, I will test Gell's theory of art and propose an extension to it as it does not account for a complex and multilayered type of agency of art. Miracles introduce a level of sophistication that a linear analysis of their role will undervalue what they actually do. To address this panel's focus; the senses, I introduce a specific form of art that is not very common in the Islamic world as it involves specific sense all together which reflects what some people value when it comes to their connection with God and Ahl Al-Bayt.