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Elizabeth Englander: Eminem Buddhism, Volume 3 at The Aldrich Museum
April 7 @ 12:00 pm - 5:00 pm
$5 – $15
April 7 through October 27, 2024
The iconography is drawn from Englander’s study of Asian religious art, specifically the history of statuary icons that began in the 2nd century BCE in India. From this iconography certain sacred forms emerge as the protagonists in Englander’s sculptures: Chamunda,“the feminine element of god,” or shakti, whose attributes symbolize the destruction of ignorance, hatred, fear, and death;(2) the poet-saint Karaikkal Ammaiyar who “traded in her beauty to worship as one of Shiva’s cremation ground ghouls”;(3) Bahubali, the victorious heir of a fratricidal dynastic war who renounces his inheritance and embraces the ascetic life; Jinas, the “beings who [have] transcended the flux of the world and attained total equanimity.”(4) Sculptural practice led Englander to a spiritual practice in the form of Zen Buddhism. This new experience informs recent works seated, like the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, in so-called “royal ease,” and in the orthoprax postures of zazen.
