/ Current Research
Consciousness Model, 2012
Bamboo skewers, glue, paint.
Approx. 50 x 60 x 80 cm
My first foray into giving consciousness a physical body. Starting with a central point, surrounded by other points, I join everything to the central point and then most of the other ones to each other, to illustrate interconnectedness.
Mona is currently enrolled in the Masters in Art & Science course at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of Arts London, UK. She will graduate in 2013.
In contemplating the nature of reality and reconciling my own spiritual pursuits, exploring the subject of consciousness seemed a logical step in the right direction and a necessary challenge. To me, our interconnectedness is a key element in a world that is becoming more and more fragmented in thinking and behaviour. As part of a living system - an ecosystem - that exists and functions on this earth, it is vital that we understand how our actions affect each other, the environment and the future of our world, and how we are in turn affected by things we have yet to understand within the cosmos.
Much of my work aims to communicate this interconnectedness, whether it is
the connection between people, between a person and her environment, or between a person and his spiritual self - his conscious awareness.
The Universe as we know it is a physical system, so where does our conscious-ness fit into this materiality? We know the world to be made of unconscious, mindless physical particles, yet it somehow contains the consciousness of which we are the agents. Trying to make sense of this through quantum theory
is one of several approaches that I am pursuing.
My current practice aims to give consciousness and its interconnectedness a physical form, an interpretation of the concept of us being plugged into a greater intelligence - the web of Universal consciousness.
Inspired by some of Rudolf Steiner’s thinking, I am also exploring the idea that we are higher dimensional beings living in a lesser-dimensional projected world. Three dimensions is, after all, the projection or shadow of a four-dimensional world. Rudolf Steiner proposes that our self-awareness resides in the fifth and sixth dimensions.
With light comes shadow, and this became a crucial part of the work.
The start of something - this 3D form/structure/model of interconnected consciousness was expanded by using light to create it’s two-dimensional identity.
Much like our thoughts and our physical bodies, one is the other and there is no boundary between the two, though we presume to live by the physical boundary that is our body.
Part of my research is to get more understanding about working with space. Two dimensions versus three, four and beyond. How much of space is in the way we perceive it, and how much of it is reality, if there is such a thing?
In wondering about these questions, I began a series of experimental paper sculptures where I try to manipulate a two-dimensional surface on which there is a print, into something that straddles two and three dimensions. Seeing how the printed image is distorted causes the eye and mind to reinterpret the paper surface and hence the entire print.
The Structure of Consciousness
Paper & Space
