Adapting Sufism to Video Art: Bill Viola and the Sacred (Critical Essay‪)‬

This article traces the many Sufi subtexts in Bill Viola's video art with a view to better understanding the relationship within his work between the sacred and the individual. Drawing on the theory of the genesis of the individual in anthropological analyses and critical theory, the author analyzes Viola's metaphors and leitmotifs and how the artist tests the limits of knowledge and the self as well as the real in which they are inscribed. **********