ART

Gizella Varga Sinai has used ‘mandala’ painting workshops as an effective therapeutical and spiritual teaching tool over many years. In addition to various workshops in Iran, Gizella has conducted workshops in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Finland, France, and Hungary during the last five years. Participants have varied from place to place and have included refugee kids, women from Africa, cancer patients, marginalized high school girls, etc. The works presented in this exhibition are the results of two ‘mandala’ painting workshops conducted in 2007 and 2008 at the Omid-e-Mehr Foundation.

The Omid-e-Mehr Foundation (established 2004 in Iran) and the Omid Foundation (established 2006 in the UK) were founded by Marjaneh Halati, a London-based social psychologist and psychotherapist. Omid is her brainchild, and it is her vision that has created its distinctive holistic approach to helping its vulnerable young Iranian and Afghani women (‘clients’) achieve self-awareness, self-determination and self-sufficiency in modern Iranian society.

These works of art are the outcome of a beautiful journey to a sacred space. The word ‘mandala’ is of Hindu origin, and comes to us from the Sanskrit language, where it has two meanings: ‘essence’ and ‘containing’; or ‘completion’ and ‘circle-circumference’, both derived from the Tibetan term ‘dkyil khor’. But a ‘mandala’ is far more than a simple circular shape. It represents wholeness, and can be seen as a model for the organizational structure of life itself -- a cosmic diagram that reminds us of our relation to the infinite, the world that extends both beyond and within our bodies and minds. The integrated view of the world represented by the ‘mandala’, while long embraced by some Eastern religions, has now begun to emerge in Western religious and secular cultures. Awareness of the ‘mandala’ may change how we see ourselves, our planet, and perhaps even our own life purpose.

The symbolic nature of the ‘mandala’ can help one to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung saw the ‘mandala’ as a representation of the unconscious self, and believed his paintings of ‘mandalas’ enabled him to identify emotional disorders and work towards wholeness in personality. The wide-spread interest in the ‘mandala’ within the Western world today is very much linked to Jung’s work and interest in the subject matter.

The artists: Maryam Abdollahi, Afsaneh Akhtarmohammadi, Leila Gholami, Nazanin Gholami, Shirin Golrezai, Zohreh Hamrang, Somayeh Himekesh, Marjan Hosseini, Soghrah Jazih, Marjan Judi, Neda Khani, Niloufar Heidari, Leila Mafi, Arezou Mehr, Maria Mehr, Susan Najafi, Marjan Nasseri, Forouzan Parvani, Nadya Parvani, Safieh Rassouli, Shamin Rassouli, Shakiba Rezai, Latifeh Safarzadeh, Soheila Salehi, Mitra Salimi, Mahboubeh Samadi, Maryam Shakeri, Shokou Sheiki, Noushin Tayebi, Mona Teimouri, Zahrah Touluhsadeghi, Fariba Zahebdad, Zeinab Zarei, Zohreh Zarifi.

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