I wrote this to artist Hélène Lefebvre who attended the residency I curated in India on New Year's Day arriving back from India to Berlin who had written me the nicest email as an inspiring artist:
My
experience of FORMLESSNESS / NOTHINGNESS albeit SURRENDER / LETTING
GO / of KNOWLEDGE / UNDERSTANDING and therefore embracing
ILLUMINATION / POTENTIAL in my 2 performance experiences
(NAKED/BLACK) in the beginning of the residency on the roof and also
toward the end on the Ganges River in Rishikesh, as illuminated by
some of these words about KALI. And beyond this. Not at all created
from this text, or from Kali, but this text very much contextualises
these experiences of meditating/musing on both (nudity/black) for me
in India during these performances. Just deepening into things I
perceive already. Perhaps a renewal on how WE in the WEST can perceive both NUDITY and BLACK as a colour / conceptually / spiritually.
I read this link only upon arriving back into Berlin on New Year's Eve as I was not in any way working from this in India but found it coincidental:
"Kali's nudity has a similar meaning. In many instances she is described as garbed in space or sky clad. In her absolute, primordial nakedness she is free from all covering of illusion. She is Nature (Prakriti in Sanskrit), stripped of 'clothes'. It symbolizes that she is completely beyond name and form, completely beyond the effects of maya (illusion). Her nudity is said to represent totally illumined consciousness, unaffected by maya. Kali is the bright fire of truth, which cannot be hidden by the clothes of ignorance. Such truth simply burns them away."
"The Goddess Kali is represented as black in color. Black in the ancient Hindu language of Sanskrit is kaala. The feminine form is kali. So she is Kali, the black one. Black is a symbol of The Infinite and the seed stage of all colors. The Goddess Kali remains in a state of inconceivable darkness that transcends words and mind. Within her blackness is the dazzling brilliance of illumination. Kali's blackness symbolizes her all-embracing, comprehensive nature, because black is the color in which all the colors merge; black absorbs and dissolves them.""Just as all colours disappear in black, so all names and forms disappear in her"
-- Mahanirvana Tantra
I read this link only upon arriving back into Berlin on New Year's Eve as I was not in any way working from this in India but found it coincidental:
"Kali's nudity has a similar meaning. In many instances she is described as garbed in space or sky clad. In her absolute, primordial nakedness she is free from all covering of illusion. She is Nature (Prakriti in Sanskrit), stripped of 'clothes'. It symbolizes that she is completely beyond name and form, completely beyond the effects of maya (illusion). Her nudity is said to represent totally illumined consciousness, unaffected by maya. Kali is the bright fire of truth, which cannot be hidden by the clothes of ignorance. Such truth simply burns them away."
"The Goddess Kali is represented as black in color. Black in the ancient Hindu language of Sanskrit is kaala. The feminine form is kali. So she is Kali, the black one. Black is a symbol of The Infinite and the seed stage of all colors. The Goddess Kali remains in a state of inconceivable darkness that transcends words and mind. Within her blackness is the dazzling brilliance of illumination. Kali's blackness symbolizes her all-embracing, comprehensive nature, because black is the color in which all the colors merge; black absorbs and dissolves them.""Just as all colours disappear in black, so all names and forms disappear in her"
-- Mahanirvana Tantra
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