Islam Aly

​String Of Memory
2026, Edition of 50 variants and five proofs.

Box size: 12.5 x 4.5 x 4”, Book size: 3.5 x 3.5 x 3.5” Cloth-covered box with plexiglass components. Coptic-bound book with laser-cut and laser-etched plexiglass covers.
Materials include handmade and aged paper, decorated paper, linen thread

This book explores the rosary as an object across cultural, social, and material contexts, understanding it as both a tool for structured reflection and a system of counting, memory, and embodied ritual. The work takes the form of a wooden box with three compartments, echoing traditional shop displays used to present small objects. A sliding plexiglass door suggests both protection and accessibility, inviting the viewer to engage closely while remaining aware of the object’s circulation and everyday use.

The first compartment presents beads made from a variety of materials—plastic, wood, stone, bone, and glass. These materials speak to the accessibility of the rosary across different socio-economic contexts. Here, the rosary is not a singular sacred object but a versatile form, adaptable to circumstance, intention, and means. Variations in material and bead number highlight the object’s ability to shift between personal reflection, ornament, and tactile engagement.

The second compartment unfolds as a drawer divided into three parts. The first contains a small Coptic-bound book made with handmade paper and wooden boards, documenting commercially produced rosaries in diverse shapes and designs. This section asks how repetition, standardization, and commerce shape objects of practice. The second section holds a needle and thread, while the third contains loose beads, inviting the viewer to assemble their own strand. Here, making becomes an act of reflection, restoring agency to the hand and emphasizing process over completion.

The third compartment contains an accordion book composed of ascending and descending words that trace the conceptual and physical logic of the rosary.

This sequence mirrors the cyclical movement of attention and rhythm, framing the rosary as a non-linear text—experienced through touch, repetition, and return rather than through pages alone.

Together, these three compartments position the rosary as an object of reflection, labor, accessibility, and transformation. The work invites viewers to consider how meaning accumulates through repetition, how experience is carried through material, and how the hand becomes a site of memory, awareness, and presence.