by Jana Astanov
SPRING/BREAK – HEARSAY:HERESY
Social theorists, and perhaps also hypnotherapists, know far too well that the lie repeated 100 times becomes the truth, this year’s Spring Break with its theme HEARSAY:HERESY looks beyond the NeoMedieval revival prominent in many displayed works, and poses the questions on the multiplicity of the TRUTH and its complexity.
With over 120 projects featuring 800+ artworks, we dive into mysticism, alchemy, witchcraft and indeed the Western European medieval iconography, intertwined with Renaissance, unicorns, UFOs and the XXI century romanticized concept of the past. Refreshingly, we also have a chance to explore beyond the pictorial classics of the Old World (ageing faster than ever).
Rites of Passage
Which Truth is the Truth? I was particularly drawn – like with all my writing, exploring the ancient times through the linguistic and mythical lens – to the worlds before the Western European takeover of our imagination, and especially before Christianity (responsible for the cultural genoicide of praSlavic religion and artifacts – all burnt and destroyed in the name of Jesus).
So what was before Jesus? Let me guide you through this year’s Spring Break at the end of the Summer, with the Autumnal hues and mushrooms popping here and there. On theme, Sarah Bereza “Psillocybic Eucharist” curated by Ambre Kelly and Andrew Gori, explores the ancient Greek psychedelic history, before Christianity’s sober and brutal takeover.
The centerpiece hung on “Mushroom Wall” reimagines the Christianity’s Last Supper, through the erased history of the sacred Greek temple, a place of pilgrimage and psychedelic rites of passage. Seemingly feminine apostles emanating the rainbow auras shapeshifting before our eyes, so do her skillfully sculptured bookends inspired by – one would like to think – land spirits or multitude of forms that emerged, transformed, and amalgamated during her personal art making trip. Tip – if you talk to the artist, you may be offered a piece of her “Mushroom Wall” wallpaper reminding you that we are approaching the Autumn Equinox, and the final days of harvest.
As I just emerged from the weekend’s shroom journey running wild through the primeval woods of the Palmaghatt Kills Ravine of Minnewaska, I came to the show with a renewed sense of self, transgressing between the fine line of feeling it all through my earthy form of the antidivine female human body and….dying.
Memento Mori
If one were to describe medieval art, its anonymous authorship, religious references, mysticism, asceticism and the major tropes in one trendy phrase of the period, it would be without a question: “MEMENTO MORI”.
All of us who lost someone close in the last two years of the pandemic may find some consolation walking through the various chapels and altars of the Spring Break fair. Bochynski Ascensio, mosaic bricolage on folding panels curated by John Witty is the memorial Altarpiece for the artist’s grandparents, and a meditation on the experience of loss.
Joe Bochynski in his Instagram post encourages to light a candle at his ancestral altar to the loved ones who passed away. I lost my Mother nearly a year ago, unable to travel to see her before her passing. Contemplating Bochynski’s altar representing his Polish immigrant grandparents who worked as a hairdresser and a barber, and then studying his roundels depicting folk tales and fairy tales and inspired by his two young daughters, soothes the pain through the awareness of human life cycles, continuity of one’s ancestral lineage, and the power of storytelling. Bochynski, through this work, is also searching for the mechanism of emancipating his soul from the conservative Catholicism he grew up with and inherited from his immigrant Polish family.
Time-traveling nun
If the enemy is death or conservative Catholicism (or deadly conservative religious indoctrination) one could escape it through the narrative installation created by Meg Lionel Murphy, in “The Keep” and curated by Indira Cesarine for the Untitled Space.
Murphy created an enchanted vivid chapel, with the red velvet “throne” where one can rest and be taken on a mystical journey alongside the time-traveling nun – the artist herself – preaching unlearning, retelling and possibly conversing with the giants populating her paintings so as to liberate oneself from the pain and trauma in order to live a more authentic life.
woMANTRA
Traveling through the Spring/Break in a non-linear fashion and beyond Western Judeo-Christian tradition, we encounter the Goddess as represented in woMANTRA curated by Sadaf Padder with Jaishri Abichandani, Sahana Ramakrishnan, and Sanie Bokhari.
As a South-Asian-American triplicate, they draw from and challenge traditions, both referencing their lineage cultural and religious background, and the multicultural reality of XXI century America which clearly failed to bring on equality in the form of white Western Feminism coerced by the military-industrial complex and seemingly serving the late capitalism more than women (read no universal childcare, education, healthcare, housing, basic income).
In the curatorial statement Sadaf Padder declares that the artists use religious symbolism to subvert patriarchal norms and invite uninhibited female subjectivity. The female, is portrayed as deity, whether it’s Abichandani’s “Swag” aka Kiran Gandhi, her self portrait “Alchemist”, or Sahana Ramakrishnan’s “The Girl Who Smelled Fish” the heroine of Mahabharata story. Holy, powerful, asking uncomfortable questions, and demanding social justice for all.
She is the CREATRIX, the Mother Goddess, the multitude of forms that resurges from the ancient origins of pre-Indus Valley like in Jaishri Abichandani series “Before Kali”. She is the divine mother, our creative force, the one who gives birth to all life forms, the one who sustains and nourishes through her body, and the one who creates the cycles of life, death and rebirth.
woMantra brings on the truth of HER SAY, spreading the legs for us all to see the origins of humanity and how each of us is birthed onto this earthly plane. The Christian immaculate conception is a scam; so is the civilization built on the protestant ethics and exploitation of the environment.
Celebrating the feminine creative essence seems altogether more healthy as a civilized choice than the death-commerce cycle of the West.
Let’s all chant woMANTRA with joy and ecstasy as we build a more just and equitable world! as a direction for the new future!
About the author
Jana Astanov is an interdisciplinary artist, a poetess, an astrologer and an independent curator born in Mazury Lake District of Poland and currently living in the Shawangunk Mountains, in upstate New York. She is the founder of CREATRIX Magazine and the author of five collections of poetry: Antidivine, Grimoire, Sublunar, The Pillow Book of Burg, and Birds of Equinox.
Her atypical English syntax comes from the fact that English is her 5th language, after Polish, Esperanto, Russian, and French – but before Spanish, and some basics Turkish, Arabic and Sanskrit – aren’t we all transcultural beings trying to manifest peace within and on the planet Earth?
Follow her on IG @Jana_Astanov & Twitter @JanaAstanov
