Glenda León is an artist whose media range from drawings to video art, including installations and photography. In this piece, she presents a book made by combining the books of five religions: The Bhagavad-Gita (Hinduism), the Torah (Judaism), the Anguttara Nikaya (Buddhism), the Holy Bible (Catholicism), and the Quran (Islam). The title of the work is on the cover, El libro de la Fé. Both the cover and the title are white, so that the name blends into the book’s cover. The color white includes all the colors of the visible spectrum, which the artist uses as a metaphor for erasing the differences among religions. This object invites us to look at it from a poetic, thoughtful, and conceptual perspective.
Identification
Title
El libro de la fe (The Book of Faith)
Production Date
2015
Object Number
2017.138
Credit Line
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Jorge M. Pérez
Handmade book created from the pages of the Bhagavad Gita, Torah, Anguttara Nikaya, Holy Bible, and the Quran
Dimensions
30 x 45 x 4 inches
Visual Description
“El libro de la Fé (or The Book of Faith) is a handmade book. It measures approximately seventeen inches tall by eleven inches wide and one and a half inches deep.
This book is made by combining the books of five religions: The Bhagavad-Gita (Hinduism), the Torah (Judaism), the Anguttara Nikaya (Buddhism), the Holy Bible (Catholicism), and the Quran (Islam). The title of the work is on the cover, El libro de la Fé. Both the cover and the title are white, so that the name blends into the book’s cover.
At first glance, the pages of the book appear to be soft white with black speckles. Upon closer inspection, the black speckles turn out to be sections of words, phrases, and truncated letters pulled from these source texts in no discernible order or pattern. Some of the letters are printed more legibly, their plain black text crisp and dark, appearing to be torn from a page of a book and pasted directly onto the current one we are looking at. Meanwhile, other sections of text are faintly suggested. Some are barely discernible at all, disappearing into the soft white pages of the book altogether. “