Bodhi Unbound (2017-2018)

When I returned to art making after ten years of being a Buddhist nun (2001-2011), my practice aligned with the resuscitation of my sexuality. Exploring the ways in which the ritual of dress affects our inner experience, I took inspiration from the materiality of the rubber trees’ serum (latex) as a vehicle for expression of constraint and release and likened it to the experience of holding precepts.  My autoethnographic research was conducted under the banner of Bodhi Unbound. ‘Bodhi,’ meaning ‘awake’ (whilst sounding like and thereby referencing ‘body’) and ‘Unbound’, connoting a delimiting of restrictions. To discipline oneself to hold precepts and wear robes, or to wear tight-fitting latex, there is a paradoxical notion of seeking liberation though being bound. Perception of pure, impure, good, naughty etc. ties the ‘performative I’ into a bound other. Disrobing from monastic dress or from a latex catsuit carries related sensations of physical and social release and relief and temporarily delimits the performative.

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Originally a PhD fundraiser campaign that garnered world wide media attention, Bodhi Unbound transformed into a contemplation of material poetics and boundaries.

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I talk about this here: Silhouettes of the Soul 

and here: The Art of Being Unbound

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Credits:

Photo - Graham Price

Graphics - Daniel Clark

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