Thank you Bill Viola for your inspirational large scale installation Ocean Without a Shore, currently showing at the National gallery in Victoria. http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/billviola/index.html
According to Bill this work is "inspired by many poets, artists and personal reflection on transfiguration. The key point is that the transformation of the Self, usually provoked by a profound inner revelation or an overwhelming sensation of clarity and fathomless emotion, overcomes the individual unit literally a 'a new light' dawns on him or her.
As Ibn al'Arabi described it: "A morning has dawned whose darkness was you".
Sometimes this dawning is of such great magnitude that the world is destined to be changed by it. Other times, a solitary mind silently alone in a room somewhere is quietly awakened, without a whisper ot ripple in the cosomos. Some of the most profound human experiences occur at time like these, arising at the outer limits of conscious awareness.
These are the 'transition zones' where experience is unstable and life is tenuous, when we are tested to our limits, and sometimes beyond. Invariably a thresholds is reached that demands to be crossed. However the decision to cross the line, whether real or imaginary is a serious one and the personal stakes can be high".
I felt that the expressions on the people depicted in his artwork, tenderly represesnted this.
The Self is an ocean without a shore
Gazing upon it has no beginning or end,
in this world and the next.
- Ibn Al Arabi (1165-1240)
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