P H Y R - O - S U T R A S

is an ordained Interfaith Minister, agnihotra and certified international Yoga instructor, a sannyas, a former prison Minister, an expat, an outsider/ visionary artist and a migrant grandmother.

Temporal Coverings, Prayerclosets & Sutras

Throughout these series this work continues to be a veil, a shroud, a piecework quilt, containing imagery of the human body, itself a closet, a shelter for the union of its parts, a garment to protect, identify and document the Self, for this time. There is a layered visual vocabulary of imagery held within the processes. Beneath the figures, palm leaves, circles, glyphs and texts, are an undersheath of handkerchiefs, linens, wax, ink, thread, dye, assemblages of seams and quilt stitchery. the Sanskrit word “sutras” means “thread”. This is mending for the human condition, creating union among the body sheaths or kosas- five bodies. Add to that the individual and the cosmic Self and we have 7 layers. There are 7 colors in the rainbow, 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 states of nadam or cosmic sound, 7 chakras in a body, 7 continents and 7 seas, the 7 vibrations of solar energy manifest in the 7 days of the week. Jubilee is the manifestation of 7’s in a spiral of time. this mending is universal and holistic.

for more than 30 years, Niradhara Marie is known as an outsider / visionary salvage artist working to empower a visual language formed of the humble stitch. The thread intended for mending the fragmented human condition, to rebirth something of beauty out of decay, by the fire of her own hands. Mixing media including encaustics, beeswax, textile inks, dyes, ink-jet and organic prints on her assemblages of salvaged, overdyed linens - tattooing these patchworks of reclaimed cloth with thread, marking rites of passage both ceremonial and mundane. Forming imagery of the human body, the body becomes a sacred text. This work is prayer, mantra and affirmation as any sound, movement or task of intention drawn out of the body.