Raya Wolfsun talks and words flow into multi-directional thoughts with the fluidity of mercury on a table. You try to catch them so as to apportion them into comprehensible slots of the conventional. But they escape. Then, she smiles and asks, “You want to know how I brand myself, right?” That fluidity also speaks for how Wolfsun treats her passions. She calls herself an artist and a scholar and reasons that those roles are quite interlinked. “I wish there was a word that could integrate both, because to me, they are heavily intertwined. In fact, all my life, it’s been strange for me to try to be one or the other,” she says. An expert in Islamic astrolabes, Wolfsun has spent many a day marvelling at the impressive collection of astrolabes at the Museum of Islamic Art, and poring over several books at the MIA library on the subject.

Read More: The Art of the Matter