May I paint your minaret?
This casual question asked by artist Boran Burchhardt to Ramazan Ucar, Imam of the Center Mosque in St Georg in Hamburg, marked the beginning of a collaboration that started in April 2008 and now will lead to visible consequences on the 2nd of August, 2009. On that day the two both twenty meters high minarets, which were made from steel by Sietas Shipyard in Hamburg in 1992, will be taken down from the Center Mosque. They are going to be restored and, with the help of the islamic community, will receive a fresh design.
It took more than a year and many expert’s reports to finally get the green light for the drastic change of the mosque’s architecture and the appearance of its urban environment. The minarets will receive an overall painting consisting of green and white hexagons, which can be linked both with football or islamic ornament. Whatever association one may choose, prejudice and false hopes are weakened by this ironical reference to religious symbols as the two minarets.

The mosque will have to stay without its minarets for five weeks. This situation may repeat itself, because Boran Burchhardt does not want any money for painting the minarets, instead he got himself a contract which assures him that he might borrow the minarets for exhibitions. So the minarets would be taken out of their religious context and turn into sculptures of contemporary art. This astonishing event could even lead to the possibility of Boran Burchhardt “to sell a minaret, north tower or south tower or both, of the Center Mosque, Böckmannstr. 40, 20099 Hamburg.”
On the 6th of September, 2009, the newly designed minarets will be put back on the Center Mosque in the Böckmannstraße 40.