The word "spirituality" carries a lot of baggage, often being associated with religious traditions and social structures.
What is spirituality when it is cut off from its historical drama and how can we evoke the presence of this feeling through art?
'The islands' by Agnes Martin, Tate Modern, 2015
Image found via the internet
'Blind Light' by Anthony Gormley, Hayward Gallery, 2007
Image found via the internet
W h i t e
In the Western world, emptiness is usually considered to be a lack, a space to be filled rather than a space seen as it is; an encouragement to empty ourselves from the superfluities of everyday life.
White is the absence of colour, a non-colour, a non-mixed singular entity - a possibility. Contemporary Minimalism relies on void and possibility as it gives off an idea of the empty unknown as a powerful simplicity and, in some cases, as a forceful trigger for profound communication and understanding.
In a modern outlook, the void is a space in transit, an empty vessel to listen, explore and rediscover the innermost self.
. . .
Agnes Martin at Tate Modern in 2015 was an experience that has stayed with me. I have been studying her work and ideas and I admire her significantly contemplative pieces and artistic precision. However, it is not until you encounter the artwork personally and from up close that you can feel the artist's presence and truly appreciate her work. Agnes's work captures a sense of the timeless by replacing essence with presence.
"The Islands" series are twelve squares in the scale of 182.9cm with hand-drawn grids in acrylic and graphite pencil on faint-white painted linens, The paintings in the exhibition space induced a feeling of emptiness — an invite to slow down and show respect as the delicate graphite traces, calculated marks and ghostly whiteness awoke a deep and reflective stillness within.
I remember myself moving close to observe the delicate work in its fine detail and then standing back in the room's centre, silently inhaling a 'blank' yet full atmosphere. Contemplating "the islands" they visually contemplate back, channeling a form of communication; a sending and a receiving, making thought-language aware of itself, like when you keep repeating a word and it suddenly empties out of context.
In Martin's paintings, white works relative to the soft and subtle graphite marks which seem to emerge out of the fainted white surface, transmitting a transient vibe. The more you move further from "The islands" the artist hand-drawn marks start to merge and disappear in the white void-like background.
The Artwork produces an experience of catharsis, tracing a deep admiration.
'The islands' by Agnes Martin
Image found via the internet
'Blind Light' by Anthony Gormley
Image found via the internet
Back in 2007 exhibited at the Hayward gallery, was 'Blind Light' by Anthony Gormley. The cube room was a cloud-filled glass space that was wet and disorientating, in this uncanny space the spectator was invited to interact by entering into the white light and vapour. Similarly, the subject of thought-language awareness appears, uncomfortably and yet pleasantly, introducing the self to the (inner) self. Gormley's spatial sculpture placed the experiencer in the uncomfortable position of losing their sense of sight and subsequently spatial coordination.
Entering the space, I recall myself inhaling the mist, trying to grab on a memory, hoping to make the experience more pleasant. In the "fight-or-flight" response, smell, taste and hearing sharpen and the subconscious flow of imagination is enhanced; evoking the senses to interlink through memory and to form intrapersonal connections. To lose the sense of "I" that is built through the human senses can be quite an unsettling experience.Clearing the mind in the absence of the known, and in the presence of the unknown, is an exhilirating and pleasant emotion. As you walk through the spatial structure, conscious attention flows on the breath, past and future dissolve, placing you fully in the present.
By the end, the room had left me with a renewed sense of wonder, questioning material possesions in the means of comfort zone and mental capability. 'Blind light' gently transitioned the environment into a white lucid dream where the boundlessness of space and loss of control turn into positive and deepened states of perceiving; a reminder to tune in with our most personal and collective existential values.
Spirituality is being aware that you are an experiencer; an awareness beyond the sense of "I"; symbolism, ideals and identification. It is an opening up to welcoming the unknown and to bringing about an awakening and a widening of our sensory organs. Experiences such as the fore-mentioned art exhibitions could possibly challenge and welcome into being new organs of perception, as a result of an innate necessity to comprehend the incomprehensible.
Image © Iliana Demetriou @__i_____d
" I've always felt that every morning the poet should stand at the window and remember that nothing that they see, not a bird or a stone, has in its possession the name they give it.
When we allow silence to reclaim those objects and things of the world, when we allow the words to fall away from them;
they reassume their own genius and repossess something of their mystery, their infinite possibility "
— T.S Elliot