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Hayāt al-Hayāt — The Book

Hayāt al-Hayāt — The Book is a series of twenty miniature paintings by Esmeralda Kosmatopoulos, carrying the myth of Hayāt al-Hayāt's serpent-woman from textile into the scale and material language of Ottoman manuscript painting.

MEDIUM

Miniature painting

MATERIALS

Arabic gum, pigment, gold leaf on paper

YEAR

2025 – 2026

About

Hayāt al-Hayāt — The Book belongs to Serpents, Genies, Chimeras and Other Wonders, and follows directly from the khayamiya series Hayāt al-Hayāt. The same myth — a serpent-woman refusing the reproductive destiny assigned to her — is fictionalised a second time here, carried into another material, another scale and another mode of attention.

The twenty miniatures follow the same progression as the textile works: the serpent-woman escapes the charmer, slips beyond the limits imposed on her body, withdraws into the abyss and receives fire — a rage that carries its own metamorphosis, burning the inherited narrative and opening a space in which another form of life can emerge. Across the sequence, the pierced womb changes register without changing meaning: what was encountered in the khayamiya panels through physical movement and spatial immersion is here approached through proximity, concentration and close looking, at the scale of a single page.

The shift from textile to miniature is not simply a change of size. Pigments bound in gum arabic form luminous, matte fields of colour, while gold leaf shifts with the light and the viewer's position. Arabic calligraphy enters the image as composition rather than caption. Text, figure, ornament and surface participate together in the construction of the serpent-woman's mythology. The change from appliqué to pigment and gold also changes the way the story is read: what unfolds across the spatial sequence of the textiles is condensed into twenty separate images, each autonomous yet connected to the same continuous account.

The works draw on the visual language of Ottoman manuscript painting, a tradition situated within the Eastern Mediterranean world to which Kosmatopoulos's own Greek background is historically connected — a proximity of geography and history rather than a direct inheritance. Rather than reproducing the technical precision or codified conventions of historical manuscripts, she reappropriates their frontal compositions, flattened perspective, saturated colour and close relationship between text and image, translating them through her own deliberately direct, almost naïve visual language.

The twenty works are therefore neither reduced copies of the khayamiya panels nor imitations of existing miniatures. They are new translations of the same scenes: the change of medium alters the rhythm, intimacy and visual density of the narrative while preserving its emotional and symbolic structure. Where the khayamiya panels are encountered through physical movement and spatial immersion, the miniatures ask for the opposite: stillness, proximity, a single sustained look. Scenes that occupied a full wall in fabric are here condensed into a surface small enough to hold in two hands — nothing in the story changes, but the scale changes what the story asks of whoever is looking at it.

The title does not name a bound volume. It names the complete sequence formed by twenty separate miniatures, autonomous yet legible as one continuous account, whether viewed side by side or dispersed across a room.

The story remains, but its language changes form.

The Story

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 1 of 20: The Reed’s Sigh
01 / 20

The Reed’s Sigh

The reed sighs the call from the Source.
Ancient spells, before the moons.
Each note embraces,
bodies tremble.
The world, gently, closes.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 2 of 20: The Captured Gaze
02 / 20

The Captured Gaze

The eye brushes the eye.
In the pupil,
the vertigo of an ancient decree.
A breath, a shiver.
The moment freezes.
She sees him. He holds her.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 3 of 20: The Moon at the Sun
03 / 20

The Moon at the Sun

In the embrace of the walls,
hands weave a nest.
The fertile body watches,
moon suspended before dusk.
The beginning trembles.
Time holds its breath.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 4 of 20: The Crowning of the Egg
04 / 20

The Crowning of the Egg

Sacred statue, at the height of her glory,
Celestial crown
upon her emptied womb.
Below, gazes bow before the beginning.
Beneath the moon’s dust,
the void watches.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 5 of 20: The Forgotten One’s Ball
05 / 20

The Forgotten One’s Ball

At the windows, the feast spins,
Breath suspended
beyond the world, beyond time.
Life dances without her.
An endless circle around the beginning.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 6 of 20: The Night’s Forgetting
06 / 20

The Night’s Forgetting

What gives nothing cannot be kept.
Hands, closed doors,
shut to pierced souls.
A star falls,
Into the moonless night.
A breath, then nothing.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 7 of 20: The Simurgh’s Embrace
07 / 20

The Simurgh’s Embrace

Beneath the Simurgh’s endless wing,
the womb opens to breath,
Echo of a thousand winds.
She dissolves into the feather,
With only the sea as witness.
Nameless, she is reborn.
A new moon calls her.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 8 of 20: The Flame that Forges
08 / 20

The Flame that Forges

The sea closes.
The stone opens.
In the hollow, a flame dances,
soft, fierce.
The fire cannot be seized.
It enters, it consumes.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 9 of 20: A New World With no End
09 / 20

A New World With no End

The hooves of Buraq
split a moonless sky.
They cross the void,
Without beginning, without end,
Without form, without name.
A light bursts forth,
brighter than nothingness.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 10 of 20: What Still Burns
10 / 20

What Still Burns

The sea remembers
the passing souls.
Full of emptiness, it overflows.
The fire draws its border.
A thousand flames against forgetting.
Illuminate.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 11 of 20: Wound in the Wind
11 / 20

Wound in the Wind

The sand bleeds.
The hooves strike.
The wind exhumes the cries.
The bite splits the skin.
The muscle remembers.
Flesh against light.
Shadow against nerve.
The truth breaks open.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 12 of 20: The Throat of the Void
12 / 20

The Throat of the Void

The man becomes silence.
The tree does not tremble.
In the shadow, they rise —
echoes of an open womb,
ancient choirs,
endless birth.
She is no longer alone.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 13 of 20: Birth of the Thousand Heads
13 / 20

Birth of the Thousand Heads

Empty wombs, open doors.
From each, an army is born.
Full of nothing, strong with all.
A thousand breaths — one voice.
The earth shudders,
then bows.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 14 of 20: Rage and Sand, Ash and Wind
14 / 20

Rage and Sand, Ash and Wind

In the dust, rage erupts.
One body, a thousand heads,
a gaping hollow.
The wind dances.
The earth trembles.
The camp fades.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 15 of 20: Unifying the Void
15 / 20

Unifying the Void

One body, two breaths.
One rends, the other embraces.
Teeth locked, iris brushed.
Beneath the shadow, a fragile peace.
Silence wounds no more.
The world breathes.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 16 of 20: The Radiance of Return
16 / 20

The Radiance of Return

What fled regains its forgotten form.
Absent among the living,
the moon erases the wounds.
Arms open.
The void fills.
The eyes search no more.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 17 of 20: Come, I’ll Take You
17 / 20

Come, I’ll Take You

Alone with the void,
another voice rises.
The black moon joins the full.
The shadow touches the light.
The void opens —
it becomes a path.
All is reborn.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 18 of 20: The Man of Pleasure
18 / 20

The Man of Pleasure

When the body expects nothing,
it receives it all.
The flesh trembles,
the skin stretches.
The moment passes through.
Nothing to carry, nothing to hold.
Only surrender.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 19 of 20: The Fertile of the Void
19 / 20

The Fertile of the Void

Nothing has been sown.
Nothing is meant to bloom.
Wombs open to the wind.
Without seeds, without fruit,
They move the moon.
The sky falls silent.
The world listens.

Hayat al-Hayat — The Book, miniature 20 of 20: Fertile Abyss
20 / 20

Fertile Abyss

Nothing grows — everything throbs.
Full of emptiness, empty of fear,
she becomes world.
Without egg and without waiting.
The invisible moves.
Create.

Studio Notes