The Golden Mandala

Teri Volini, Sowing Peace:

Just as a small seed in the womb of the earth
is an irrepressible promise and hope
of the green life that will sprout from it,
in the same way the Word
sown in the furrows of a Mandala
represents and embodies the power,
the ineffable drive to germinate,
with simple alchemies, new Worlds.
A special, immediate language:
Justice, Peace, Love, Knowledge,
seminal and activating terms,
essential inner force – nuclear –
penetrating success and resonance,
renewal and prodigious fruits
for a new race of Humans.

(Translated from the Italian.)

THE GOLDEN MANDALA

Created in Milan between 1 and 13 November 2004, the Golden Mandala was marked in its circles by about a hundred men and women from different countries of Arab culture: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine…

Starting this work of practising peace, Teri first of all turned to her neighbours, then to the other “foreign” residents of the tenement building with balconies where she lives; she then repeated the request all along via Padova and in the most varied places – supermarket, tobacconist, internet point, café, launderette, halal butcher, pastry shop… – up to the mosque.

She asked everyone to write in the circles, to sow peace in the furrows of the mandala…

Even if after a moment of wary surprise or incomprehension, the response to the request was general, and everyone signed up to peace…

The metaphor of the seed – which contains, in the greatest concentration, all the potential of fertile fruition – was easily perceived as an impulse towards a shared project…

The very intense 13-day journey – which turned out to coincide with the sacred period of the Muslim world, Ramadan – made possible several works of art and life:

– first of all the symbolic Action itself: a real Weaving of new relationships between human beings, based on recognising the other as part of ourselves, and founded on the values of brotherhood, solidarity and friendship; on stressing what we have in common rather than what divides us…
– a qualitatively different gaze, based on esteem and respect for the feminine represented by the artist, especially on the part of Arab boys and men…
– a visual work not only aesthetically fascinating but endowed with great communicative power for new models of relationship, based on the awareness of being one…

The Mandala already has a strong energy in itself; in this case it enjoys a surplus of communicative power, activated by the longing for peace of those who wrote in it…

The energy of this aching desire – which is also awareness and vital instinct – is so strong that it passes directly into those who will later stand before the Work… through their eyes, into their hearts and minds…

The result is a circular field of radiance, sparkling with arabesques, in which the language itself, thanks to its very particular structure, suggests a vibrant movement in which the signs acquire their own aesthetic and communicative autonomy…

The gold colour further underlines the preciousness of the Word – peace – that turns round and round in the circles of the mandala, carrying in its various handwritings the weight of so many worlds – and often the pain – of the many writers, each with their own story and hope…

The golden letters dance in a circle, activating the alchemical power of naming peace, which thus becomes invocation, evocation – through the word itself – of the founding value it embodies, an aching desire to embrace it, so that the work of peace may be realised without delay.

Teri Volini – Delta Centre for Art and Culture – info: terivolini.art@gmail.com

A work in synergy with the poem of the same title published in the book UNIVERSI.

Some of Teri’s poems act as a counterpoint to her paintings or performances. Heightening feeling and vision nonetheless leaves the different modes of expression independent of one another: the poems are not meant to describe the other works, nor are the latter meant to illustrate the former. What matters is the balance, the happy union that is created, the synergy that arises, in that attempt to achieve the harmony and beauty at the heart of all Teri’s research.