Aga Khan’s work focus of exhibit
A photographic and multimedia exhibition depicting the Aga Khan’s lifelong commitment to improving various facets of the human condition is coming to Calgary.
Temina Lalani-Shariff, with the Ismaili Council for the Prairies, says the exhibit, Rays of Light: Glimpses into the Ismaili Imamat, takes place from Aug. 24 to Sept. 1.
“This is a global exhibition. It was inaugurated first in 2009 in Paris at the close of the Aga Khan’s golden jubilee year,” she says.
“We are the third date across Canada. It kicked off in Edmonton earlier this summer and then it’s been to Vancouver.”
The exhibition takes place at the Telus Convention Centre in Calgary.
“It’s essentially a multi-dimensional exhibit. It’s a professional grade exhibit that’s got photographs of some of the archives of His Highness the Aga Khan. So some of his personal archives. Some personal photos as well as a combination and a collection of photos that have been across the different institutions of the Aga Khan development network,” she says.
“This is a network that was established more than 50 years ago and it encompasses the singlelargest international agency other than the (United Nations) for development work around the world.”
Lalani-Shariff says the exhibit is helping people understand how the Aga Khan has realized the social conscience of Islam through this work.
It has five different themes: hope, identity, confluence, harmony and enlightenment.
The Aga Khan is the 49th hereditary Imam (spiritual leader) of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims. He is also the founder and chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network, which brings together a number of development agencies, institutions, and programs that work primarily in the poorest parts of Asia and Africa.
“With Canada being home to several major initiatives, including the Ismaili Centre in Vancouver, the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat and the Global Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa, as well as the forthcoming Ismaili Centre, the Aga Khan Museum and their Park in Toronto, the exhibit provides an insight and a context into His Highness the Aga Khan as Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims,” said Malik Talib, president of the Aga Khan Council for Canada, in a statement.
For more information on the Rays of Light Exhibition visit www.theismaili.org/raysoflight.
“The exhibition is not just to be looked at — it is to be experienced,” says Nina Hirji Kheraj, one of its curators, on its website.
“We hope that visitors will be touched intellectually, emotionally and spiritually by the experience and that they will leave not only with an increased understanding of the role of the Imam as a spiritual and world leader, but also with a heightened sense of the values embodied in Islam.”