Mira Hunter
// Sufi Mevlevi Whirling Dervish & visual artistMIRA HUNTER is a Sufi Mevlevi Whirling Dervish and visual artist from Vancouver, Canada. She graduated from NSCAD University, the Yale University Summer School of Art, and was awarded the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship. Mira Hunter has toured internationally with DJ Mercan Dede, and has collaborated with photographer and sculptor Mary Mattingly. She lives and works in Istanbul and Vancouver. Her creative and innovative designs, drawings, and paintings are all available online.
Website: www.mirahunter.com
Photo: Greg Liburd / Evil Genius Creative Inc.
Interview:
Faith and music are both invisible. It is difficult to imagine two more potent influences. I feel that they both have the rare ability to force a cathartic opening of the human emotional senses. Music seems to play directly to my subconscious. The impulse to respond can feel irrepressible. There are some rhythms that demand my body to whirl, and there is some music that brings my humble act of whirling to places I don’t know how to talk about. I find it difficult to imagine a spiritual impulse without music inherent to it. I feel that spirituality is not specific to religious orders, but permeates all aspects of existence. I think it is more reliant on perception and awareness. In Sema, the ritual practiced by the Mevlevis or Whirling Dervishes, the musicians are not considered separate from the whirling, everyone wears the same tall camel felt hat that indicates their common spiritual identity. There is a communication between those whirling and those making the music. The length of the compositions can shift, or the spirit of the solos can take on another character.
Though my father, Raqib Brian Burke, began studying Sema before I was born, it was his intention for my sister and I to be raised without any strong religious links so that when we were older, we would be able to make our own decisions on faith without a nostalgic bias. Therefore, my imagination, music, and nature became outlets for my early spiritual experiences. My father made me my first mix tape when I was three years old. I had a dress that had been made just for dancing, with a large flower print skirt. I think then it was Paul Horn and his golden flute, the Penguin Café Orchestra, and the last track was a recording of my mirrored ballerina music box. By the time I was twelve, the mix tape included King Crimson, Led Zeppelin, and Roxy Music. Every profound ecstatic experience of my life has been somehow connected to music.
“Faith and music are both invisible. It is difficult to imagine two more potent influences.”
– Mira Hunter, Sufi Mevlevi Whirling Dervish and visual artist
