Sunyata : transfigurations in silk

Sunyata: Transfigurations in Silk was a live-process art event featuring silk painting, costume creation and dance. The event took place in the B. Iden Payne Theatre Lobby on the University of Texas at Austin campus over the course of a week, during which I endeavored to paint 560 square feet of white silk suspended in the space. The images I painted formed a personal creation narrative, inspired by the lived experience creating and archetypical themes from creation mythology, cosmogony and human development. Throughout the event, a steady stream of visitors passed through the installation, contributing inspiration to the process in the form of images, ideas, quotes and stories, and witnessed the active creating unfold over time. On the seventh day of the event, upon the completion of the painting process, the silk was cut into pieces and transformed into costumes on live dancer’s bodies. Inspired by ritual wall painting and sand painting from Indian, Tibetan and Navaho cultures and the temporally bound work of contemporary action-based artists, the project was an assay into the transitory nature of the artistic process and an exploration of transformative properties of silk (a material that is central to my work as textile artist and costume designer). The event also explores how a personal creative process can become public, performative and participatory.