NEWTON AND HIS EASTERN PIECE // MEDITATION MEDIATION // CONTEMPORARY ASIAN BIENNIAL // TAICHUNG, TAIWAN // 2011
This artwork investigates natural and historical Chinese medicines and our contemporary relationships to them. The work is a hope that by combining cultural materials associated to festival and ceremony the work will then facilitate audience engagement through the creation of a natural mandala as the work is released onto a bed of salt. Communities past and present are bridged, as a greater sense of understanding and respect is generated through our relationship to natural medicine and wellbeing.
The polarisation of traditional and contemporary applied by social and spiritual meditation (and mediation) shift and reposition the materials and our relationship to them. As the artwork responds directly to audience activation, it is a site for us to be witness to our own state of being and revisit the traditional relationship to the natural medicine. The work is in a state of flux and is enabled or realised by public participation, it begins as an initial installation that is created; an opening ceremony which then activates the work to be handed over to the public to complete. It is an opportunity for a fine art framework to address the inner and outer space that is often in conflict. By connecting to the work and releasing it in ways that mirror ceremony and ritual from many indigenous cultures we activate the circle and revisit the the native medicinal traditions of Taiwan and their relationship to our wellbeing today.
