EXPLORATIONS & REVELATIONS > Vimana Sculptures

Bachvarova_sofia_death_vimana, art_sofia_bachvarova,Vimana_Sculpture
Mourning/Death Vimana
mixed media wired light sculpture
approx. 24" dia.
2015

The Mourning / Death Vimana is the vehicle of parting. It aims to commemorate as a three-dimensional vanita the interruption of life as this worldly sensation of energy and its ultimate dismembering, dripping back into the formless.
Black venetian glass, feathers, skeletal remains and funerary beads became tangled in a last dance frozen forever into a Grimm's brothers -like fairytale forest of forgetting. At the very bottom a snake knots itself into a noose finally becoming a weighted pendulum which scrapes faint outlines onto a vessel filled with black sand.
The subject of death has remained a taboo in western culture. Nonetheless, the fear of dying is deeply embedded in our collective subconscious. The Mourning/Death vimana works as a visual meditation on the illusion of permanence and the inevitable cycling of time, which in eastern philosophy is recognized as Maya and Samsara; the two major obstacles to one's spiritual growth.