Saleem, S. and Sobers-Khan, N. 2025. ReOrientalism: Representing London's Muslim history through its adapted mosques. The London Journal. https://doi.org/10.1080/03058034.2025.2479659
| Title | ReOrientalism: Representing London's Muslim history through its adapted mosques |
|---|---|
| Type | Journal article |
| Authors | Saleem, S. and Sobers-Khan, N. |
| Abstract | The exhibition, Three British Mosques, was exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum's Pavilion of Applied Arts at the Venice Biennale 2021 and co-curated by Shahed Saleem (this co-author), Christopher Turner and Ella Kilgallon. The exhibition took three of London's mosques, each created through the adapted reuse of existing buildings as its subject and recreated 1:1 replicas of architectural elements from each building for display. Lidar digital scans of each building were also undertaken and images from the scans showing cut aways of the mosques were displayed alongside filmed interviews with mosque attendees. The existing buildings that were adapted to mosques were a semi-detached pair of Edwardian houses, a Victorian public house, and a Georgian church then synagogue. The mosques incorporated references from historic Islamic architecture, and this, overlayed onto the existing London buildings, resulted in complex cross-cultural architectural palimpsests. This article will consider how the representation and gallery display of the architecture of London’s Muslim populations can be understood within the historical context of displaying Islamic architecture in European museums and galleries. This article argues that Three British Mosques subverted this art history by challenging orientalised and stereotyped representations of Muslim interior spaces, characteristic of the display of Islam in European institutions, by presenting instead the quotidian and intimate details of everyday Muslim life and architectural cultures. In this way, this article demonstrates that the exhibition asked the viewer to see Muslim life and experience in London as complex, nuanced, human and negotiated. |
| Keywords | Faith |
| London | |
| Mosque | |
| Architecture | |
| Venice | |
| Biennale | |
| Journal | The London Journal |
| ISSN | 0305-8034 |
| 1749-6322 | |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis |
| Accepted author manuscript | File Access Level Open (open metadata and files) |
| Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1080/03058034.2025.2479659 |