‘Irtiwa’ Turns the Rain Prayer Into Clay at Design Doha

Presented at the second edition of Design Doha Biennial, ‘Irtiwa: A Reenactment of Salat al-Istisqa’ in Clay’ by Egyptian designer Shawky Abdalla and Abdul Rahman Anwar takes the Islamic prayer for rain as the starting point for a series of clay vessels exploring water, language and communal memory.

Salat al-Istisqa’ is traditionally performed collectively during periods of drought. In ‘Irtiwa’, Arabic letters drawn from the prayer are used to shape the vessels themselves, giving spoken language a physical form and preserving the memory of communal recitation in clay.

The project also reflects on how communities understand water. Abdalla and Anwar draw on the prayer’s associations with patience, hope and shared dependence, presenting water as something received collectively rather than simply consumed.

That relationship extends to the oasis, which the designers describe as a form of “spiritual ecology”. Here, its meaning is shaped not only by access to water, but also by the rituals, language and social memory built around it.

By turning the words of the prayer into structure, ‘Irtiwa’ gives an ephemeral ritual material permanence. The vessel becomes both an object and a record of the act that inspired it.