Al-Futuhat al-St. Paul / The St. Paul Openings project speaks to the ideas and embodiment of spatial succession as it relates to religious landscapes. In America, these landscapes are constantly changing — as one religious group moves out of its sacred space, another moves in. Darul Uloom Islamic Center in East St. Paul, Minnesota, sits on what used to be the Church of St. John.

The concept of space and the claims on space within this new and repurposed built environment takes on new meanings as emblematic Islamic themes of spatial expressions are reconstituted. Using Ibn ‘Arabi’s theory of hermeneutics and creative imagination, Mohamud Mumin establishes a site-specific installation project within the confines of a mosque — using a series of artistic mediations to decode the creative imagination and the epistemology of real (and imagined) space and aesthetics.

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