URBAN MANDALA

Györgyi Kapala: URBAN MANDALA

The Impermanence of Phenomena – Information Carriers

The exhibition will be opened by Dr. Andrea Bordács, aesthete and head of the Department of Visual Arts at ELTE BDPK.

Olajfolt a nedves aszfalton — the photo that inspired the embroidered tapestry of URBAN MANDALA was taken after the rain. I was captivated by the beauty of the phenomenon! Naturally, other reflections emerged as well — sustainable development, and the unsustainable state resulting from excessive consumption pushed to its limits. 

The pace of scientific discoveries and information flow leaves behind obsolete technology’s mechanical and chemical waste.

Information has shed its carriers, changed attire: from floppy disks to CDs, then DVDs, and now it hides in servers and clouds…

The path toward the future is lined with the unburied corpses of technological progress.

In the middle of this senseless rush, I stopped — or rather sat down to embroider — to use the embroidery needle to halt time and bring it back to the immediate living environment, as meditative content. I picked up the thread.

Embroidery itself is a meditative state; its monotony mentally liberates the consciousness entangled and bound by thoughts.

The quilted, patchwork-like fabric, showcasing colorful data storage discs (floppies), domesticates the image of a defunct technological object by recontextualizing it as a decorative element — transforming it into a wall hanging.

I depict the rainbow-colored oil streak on a thangka, a vertical Tibetan silk banner.   

The colors of the rainbow are caused by the dispersion of white light. In Bön Buddhism, white is the color of space, the fifth element, where all beings take form. In this space, the statement unfolds and becomes embodied in the literal sense — appearing on a stitched, tattoo-like embroidered surface — the first line of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra: “All phenomena are impermanent.”

The carrier of this information — a female body printed on construction mesh — supports the statement of impermanence. Due to its light-transmitting character, the material becomes translucent when lit, 

thus only the embroidered characters remain visible, appearing as shadows, as memento mori on the wall. 

Györgyi Kapala