Art in general has ….(to do with the) Great Process of Divine Realization. It is…part of the Sacred Domain at its best and supports the disposition that belongs in the Sacred Domain of those who practice the Divine life for real. (Adi Da Samraj, 2004)
“Epic” Suites
She Is Mind: The Iconography of Eve
Introduction
Adi Da starting working on his suite, She Is Mind in 2002. She Is Mind: The Iconography of Eve was yet another leap in complexity of meaning and technical sophistication. A new set at the Mountain Of Attention expanded Adi Da’s capacity for projections and gave him access, via a database, to all of his artworks in all media. This was also the moment Adi Da chose to move into color photography. He composed this next work alternating between black-and-white and color nonaptychs—representing, respectively, how the “root-mind” and the “perceptual mind” see. She Is Mind takes the apparently simple elements of “apple”, “woman”, “chair”, “man”, etc., and masterfully choreographs them into a multilayered communication about suffering, the biblical myth of Genesis, and the illusion of “knowing”—in sum, “the symbols, structures, and meaning of mind”. Adi Da’s meanings are layered throughout the images. In deciphering She Is Mind for others, Adi Da spoke about many of the primary symbols—adding, in summary, that “at the end, all you have is the light”. He reiterated that the goal is not to come up with a verbal explanation for his art. As he pointed out, “The obsessive effort to conceptualize or explain or grasp reality is the problem with mind.” – The World As Light – An Introduction to the Art of Adi Da Samraj – by Mei-Ling Israel.
Transcending the Presumption of “Difference”
“She” is mind. “She” is the mind. This Suite, viewed in its entirety, is a “portrait” of mind, a communication about the meaning of mind and the transcendence of mind.
She Is Mind is an epic artistic event, created from apparently simple subject matter. Images of “chair”, “woman”, “apple”, “man” are choreographed into layers of time and space – simultaneously working with ancient paradigmatic myth, the strife of suffering and mortality, the search for sexual fulfillment, and above all, the “illustrated anatomy” of Spiritual Awakening.
Continue reading – ‘She Is Mind’ program handout in 2002.
Listen to Julie Anderson tell her leela about being the subject of Adi Da’s ‘She Is Mind’ suite in 2002.
The Art of Adi Da Samraj: A Retrospective
A retrospective of Adi Da’s monumental-size artworks which includes footage of Adi Da speaking about His Work. This video features photographs and video footage of various exhibitions, and commentary from art critics, an art historian and a museum curator. For more information about the artwork of Adi Da Samraj, please go to: https://www.daplastique.com