Mohamad Aaqib Anvarmia on the work

Shah Mat is a layered laser-cut poplar plywood piece, finished in a palette of red, black, and gold. The title is not a reference to chess in the conventional sense it is the reverse. Shah mat is the ancient Persian phrase from which the English word "checkmate" derives: shah meaning king, mat meaning frozen, helpless, unable to respond. The phrase travelled from Persia through the Arab world and into medieval French before entering English, and the title carries that entire linguistic journey within it.

The idea behind the piece was to replace the black and white squares of a chessboard with Islamic geometric patterns, finding a motif that sits correctly within a square grid while still carrying the full complexity of the tradition. The result is a composition of repeating stars and interlocking shapes arranged in a precise grid, with no single focal point: the pattern extends continuously across the surface, and the eye moves through it without resolution, echoing the way attention moves across a chessboard mid-game, where every piece is connected within a larger system.

The making process follows my usual method: layered laser-cut plywood, built up and hand-finished to create depth and shadow that shifts as light moves across the surface, but here the repetition also carries conceptual weight, mirroring the logic of chess itself: structured and rule-bound, yet endlessly variable within those constraints.

Shah Mat represents my practice because it sits at the exact intersection of architectural precision, centuries-old geometric tradition, and a process that turns flat, repeating pattern into something with real depth and shadow. It is precision and rhythm pushed until the structure itself becomes the subject.