(2022) I set an exercise for myself – with a timer, create small female deities spending 10 minutes per piece; at first using only hands, then only one tool. This ‘letting go’ exercise allows the mind to quieten and the hands to express the essential.
The creations are spontaneous, fresh and vivid. They open up a space that I cannot normally access through my usual, more cerebral, less intuitive, way of making. The challenge of the time constraint is exciting and many of the most creative findings arise from the need to ‘fix something gone wrong’.
I realise that through this exercise, I access some ancestral, archetypal forms. Later on, through my readings, I connect these to the ancient worship of the goddess.
It is difficult to grasp the immensity and significance of the extreme reverence paid to the Goddess over a period of either twenty-five thousand years (as the Upper Palaeolithic evidence suggests) or even seven thousand years and over miles of land, cutting across national boundaries and vast expanses of sea. Yet it is vital to do just that to fully comprehend the longevity as well as the widespread power and influence this religion once held.
Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman
(2023) I display one of the deities on my Skin Project Wall as part of the exhibition From a Home in the Hills at Galleryske, Delhi.
THE SKIN PROJECT 