THE AKEDAH TRIPTYCH

By Maureen Drdak

Introduction to the work; Brothers in Blood; The Akedah Triptych

Martyrdom is a phenomenon at once public and private, sacred and profane. The complexity of its definition, and the contested nature of its virtue and vice, overlook the origins of its root matrix, ignoring the communal inheritance passed from Judaism to Christianity to Islam. There is an extensive and long existent body of scholarly writing and traditional literature in all three of the great Abrahamic religious traditions of monotheism which speaks  to the sublime reverence and dark fascination in which it is held, and the centrality of its import. Its history as a favored theme in Western visual art is well known. Yet, until the late twentieth century, the destructive potential of its periodic exercise was containable within tolerable boundaries, physical, spiritual and political. That reality has changed, and the magnitude and scope of its nihilistic exercise has transcended the limitations of individual annihilation, going global in both reach and aspiration.

In the current global moment of the expanding Iran War, all three messianic claims are ascendant and in ominous play.

Martyrdom is paradox. It lies at the intersection of death and sex, contraction and expansion, love and hate, will and slavery, self-aggrandizement and self-obliteration. But ever does it claim for itself the name of “sacrifice”. It is on this word-and this claim- that our minds—and understanding—must turn.

The Akedah Triptych uniquely embodies the distillation and unity of these archaic forces, addressing the global peril of their unrestrained contest for supremacy, offering the potential for transmutational transcendence through deeper understanding.

Note; The companion work, The Killing of Lions; an Iraqi war meditation, is in the collection of the Emir Father Hamad Khalifa al Thani and Sheikha Mozah in Qatar. https://www.maureendrdak.com/the-killing-of-lions-an-iraqi-war-meditation#