Nadi

Nadi in Sanskrit means river, it is specifically applied, in yoga, to the subtle currents of energy one may experience within the body. In the throat and pelvis there is a confluence of three rivers: Ida, Pingala and Sushumna. These internal rivers are experiential, embodied–not merely signifiers of information.

I’m doing site-specific paintings using iron from landscapes throughout the world: the 700,000-year-old glacier-capped volcano Snæfellsjokull, in Iceland, the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Iron salvaged from these landscapes is thrown, disgorged, emanated–the beleaguered earth embodying the portrait format. In contrast to the vast, endless space of the landscape format, the portrait format focalizes us in relation to the spine of space-it is the landscape finding its feet.

In 1858 the Trans Atlantic cable was installed in the depths of the seabed, connecting Europe to North America. The cable was encased in an iron sheath, it was only meant to strengthen the cable yet–as a good conductor–it interferred with the propagation of electromagnetic fields, because it increased the capacitance of the line. This is why today, most power lines are suspended high up–Earth’s iron, like a battery, generates electrical fields in the very space where we dwell. Ironically the insulating sheath of iron summoned a non-dual state of energy, where the electrical cable was ecstatically beyond its skin.

On the Ocean Floor, close to the tectonic spreadings, fresh mantle rocks are exposed directly, as water drips down beneath the sea floor, deep within the blazing currents of iron. Here it reacts with Olivine to form Serpentinite, producing intense heat and gas. It is from the remainder of this process that life began–in deep time.

Metals along ocean-ridges catalyses a metabolism not dependent upon sunlight, one that is chemical. A flux that transforms, a current we find inside the cities of our very cells, a flux that even precedes our genetic information.

It is the movement that creates the form–a form disgorged by the crack that is in everything.