Star of Soheil

About the work

Soheil is Canopus — the second brightest star in the night sky, visible from the Gulf and long used by Arab navigators for orientation. In Islamic and Persian tradition, Soheil carries associations of good omen, wisdom and spiritual clarity. Mohebi takes this celestial reference and renders it in polished stainless steel with a mirror finish, glass and sand — materials that between them hold light, reflect it, scatter it and ground it simultaneously. The work is simultaneously cosmological and intimate: a star held at human scale, a navigation point you can stand in front of. The sand at its base brings the desert into the equation — the landscape from which the star was always observed.