World for New Beginning
Asha Dangol, 2015
Acrylic on canvas
167 × 91 cm

© Asha Dangol

My series World for New Beginning engages the viewer in a provocative dialogue on issues ranging from urbanization, consumerism, and ecology. These contemporary issues draw on a polarity and dichotomy of visual symbols: traditional and contemporary, past and present, the mythological and the real. In its cultural appropriations, the imagery is seductive, whereby the meanings become even more acute when the viewer reads the cultural signifiers. The tantric Buddhist deity Vajrabhairav is re-contextualized in an environment of urban decay in the form of the dead tree. The female figure, recast as a lotus, conjoins the spiritual with a sense of regeneration, the new beginning. The painting depicts the contemporary world as it approaches death and destruction owing to environmental degeneration. In the traditional Paubha paintings, Prakriti and Purusa, the god and goddess, Shiva and Shakti or the male and the female principles are in union, and signify the assimilation of the individual self and the cosmic being, whereas in this composition, the two male and female figures are in union, signifying the individual’s union with death and new beginning. The divinities stand atop vintage vehicles suggesting contemporary supernatural power. The painting renews our perception, and compels us to think about our earth, our environment and human existence.