From where using geomtric sgapes idea came to Adbulnasser Gharem`s mind.

A 2016 stamp painting, "Pause," speaks quite graphically to terrorism. It depicts the World Trade Center engulfed in a plume of smoke formed by hundreds of tiny English and Arabic letters and computer keyboard symbols such as @ or # that Gharem painted white and gray and beige and black. From afar, the vertical stacks of the Twin Towers form the digital symbol for pause, as it would appear on a TV remote. "The world was going crazy and I wanted people to calm down and think about themselves and their ideas and what happened — just stop and think," he says.

As an Arab and a practicing Muslim, the idea of "The Path" is something Gharem still thinks about daily — how to forge his own path in life and what that might look like, the divergent paths he and high school friends took or the path of Islam itself, in which "God guides us to the straight path like 100 times a day when we pray," he says. Ultimately, however, the path should be a personal and pliable journey open to interpretation rather than a rubber-stamped road, Gharem says — an overarching theme in his work.

"The world was going crazy and I wanted people to calm down and think about themselves and their ideas and what happened — just stop and think," he says. As an Arab and a practicing Muslim, the idea of "The Path" is something Gharem still thinks about daily — how to forge his own path in life and what that might look like, the divergent paths he and high school friends took or the path of Islam itself, in which "God guides us to the straight path like 100 times a day when we pray," he says.