Neha, chooses to be painted with her diya, “a lamp/candle used in Hindu festivals.” She says, “It's actually really special to me as it was my grandmother's diya, and I was very close to her before she passed away. It represents my close connection to family and my cultures which both shape my values that make me who I am today.”
Diyas are an object with a long history in Hindu and Indian culture. The cotton wick symbolizes the ‘Atma’ or human soul and the hand-moulded butter or oil ‘ghee’ symbolizes materialistic values. The candle swathes the home in light as its occupants metaphorically burn their evils, seeking substance through enlightenment in the internal world. The diya gives a fixed form to the appearance of the mind, a metaphor showing how boundless and expansive it can be.
“As for the pose,” Neha, thought, “I could meditate with the diya beside me, which expresses my desire to get to know myself and love myself through meditation … Or… hold the diya in my hands … I think it would look best in a dark place so the diya could illuminate my face.”
Religion insists the material self is an illusion, however, embraces a sacred devotion of objects bridging the gap between spiritual and profane. Beautiful objects anchor formless ideas, giving them life. Sight identifies and touch verifies. Existential thought is a whip of smoke that, when possessed, becomes a material experience, one cannot exist without the other. The more we contemplate the material world, the more we see and accept that it is immaterial.
Religion and art both unite the object and soul using the imagination. Religious symbols abstract the material world through an aesthetic and sensory framework, turning memory into an art form. Like art, they maintain the soul in imagination not literalism, wisdom not intelligence. Art and religious objects know they are a metaphor, giving rather than receiving value.
Neha, is the only subject painted in Objectified to choose an object with spiritual value. In a way, Neha’s, diya is a meta-symbol for the aims of this series as a whole. Demonstrating how, through a ritual or conceptual lens, commonplace objects can objectify the soul. Embracing life as it is. Comforting us when life is hard. Preserving holiness, religious or secular, in the material world.