Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen

Inshallah
(2015)
Red neon, timer. 60cm x 16cm

 

Inshallah is a flashing neon work made during a residency at Sharjah Art Foundation and later shown at Sharjah Biennial 9 (2009). The Arabic script pulses in red, switching on and off at three-second intervals. When it goes dark, the word doesn’t fully disappear: it lingers as a faint afterimage, a retinal imprint that turns absence into a presence of its own—like something half-promised, half-withheld.

​

“Inshallah” means “if God wills.” It can express faith and humility, but it also carries ambiguity: a way of keeping the future open, of delaying certainty, of acknowledging forces beyond individual control. The on/off rhythm literalises that condition—hope arriving in bursts, certainty interrupted.

​

The colour matters. Red reads as urgency: a warning light, a signal, a stop — or a flare of desire and insistence. And for many Western viewers, the glowing script is first encountered as pure form: line and rhythm. Meaning only fully enters once the word is translated, so understanding arrives late—like the light itself, flickering between legibility and opacity.