This collaborative tapestry is based on a Tibetan thangka from the late 18th century; its elements and characters have been modified and re-cast as players in a modern parable. The thangka illustrates the tale of Ghantapada, a monk who has fallen in love with a courtesan’s daughter and attained mahamudra (universal union). As the pair ascend to the sky, a flood threatens to engulf a crowd of royal courtiers hostile to their union, who are saved by the sudden appearance of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.
Our tapestry employs the thangka’s iconography as a language with which to address the contemporary issue of global warming. In the thangka, the lovers’ divine union and the flood are forces beyond the control of humanity; likewise, in our time, global warming has gotten dangerously out of control. Accordingly, the threatening ‘flood’ in our tapestry is the result of melting glaciers. The sun is surrounded by a CO2 symbol, referencing the ‘greenhouse effect’ by which CO2 traps the sun’s heat in the earth’s atmosphere. Avalokiteshvara has been re-painted as an androgynous, distinctly human figure trying to halt the flood and corresponding CO2 emissions. We have replaced an animal pelt which was slung over the figure’s shoulder with a rabbit’s foot hung from his or her waist, as if to wish the figure luck in repelling danger. The lovers have vanished from a sky menaced by murky gases, in which only the floating scarf which encircled them remains. Its shape takes the form of a chart, recording the change in global temperature and rise in CO2 levels over the last thousand years.
–Donald & Era Hamaji Farnsworth |
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