Vimana Sculptures
These were originally conceived as a conceptual bridge between the floating realities of the paintings and the desire to bring the sensation of suspension in an installation format. According to the ancient texts of India, more specifically the Vimanika Shastra which is known to be based on earlier texts of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the vimanas were the flying vessels of the gods and apparently possessed advanced technologies enabling these huge "gleaming flying machines” to move with unbelievable speeds and also apparently capable of emitting destructive beams “like thousand suns” that “made elephants scream” and “melted everything in their path”. Whether purely a myth or based on some suppressed historical evidence, the idea of the existence of such flying vehicles thousands of years ago in our forgotten past brings into question whether or not our ancestors worshiped as deities a technologically advanced alien civilization with obvious exploitative agendas, who posed as gods.
So then for me, the question of the Vimanas emerged in a slightly different perspective – if these vehicles enabled the “gods” to travel anywhere at the speed of their wish, what is the most powerful vehicle for us mortals to be transformed into a kind of extreme state of being which allows us to connect with our god-like nature, or in other words; the ability to perceive every vibration of every thought with every particle in our bodies to the point that there is no separation from that perceived thought, regardless of its nature.
Each of the five Vimanas represents a certain visceral, yet divine state of being. Each carries its own vibrational energy. Each is complete, yet part of the whole.