Hybrids in Mythology

For as long as humans have been making up stories, we’ve been making up stories about creatures who are part-human, part-animal. A Greek demi god mates with a horse, and the result is a half man half horse. A grief-stricken Assyrian goddess flung herself into a lake and became half fish. A Poseidon admirer slights the sea god, who then makes his wife fall in love with a bull, conceiving a half man half bull. A woman in a French myth sleeps with a bear and their offspring is a Jean De l 'Ours. At the center of all these myths is the universal truth- beneath our intelligence and emotional capacity, we are ultimately animals. 

Hindu mythology is no different.The most prominent hybrid in Hindu iconography is elephant-headed Ganesha, god of wisdom, knowledge and new beginnings.Hanuman is a mighty warrior God part monkey part human. In India the festival Hanuman Jayanti is popular when colourful processions fill the streets. People dance, carry idols of Lord Hanuman and some people wear masks and tails to imitate the monkey God. Kali appeared when Parvati shed her dark skin which then became Kali, the Dark One whilst Parvati was left as Gauri (the Fair One). This story emphasises Kali’s blackness which is symbolic of eternal darkness and which has the potential to both destroy and create.

Both Naga and Garuda are non-hybrid mythical animals (snake and bird, respectively) in their early attestations, but become partly human hybrids in later iconography.

The hybrid Gods I grew up looking at are embedded in my subconscious mind and influence my drawings. 

Elephant God Ganesha

Snake Goddess Nagini

Garuda

Hanuman Monkey God

Kaali the black one

Dark Nursery Rhymes

I always thought nursery rhymes had dark secrets hidden in them and this research proves it.The beautiful apparently nonsensical rhymes we sing to children at bedtime are probably not so innocent after all.....


Plague, medieval taxes, religious persecution, prostitution: these are not exactly the topics that you expect to be immersed in as a new parent. But probably right at this moment, mothers of small children around the world are mindlessly singing along to seemingly innocuous nursery rhymes that, if you dig a little deeper, reveal shockingly sinister backstories. Babies falling from trees? Heads being chopped off in central London? Animals being cooked alive? Since when were these topics deemed appropriate to peddle to toddlers?
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150610-the-dark-side-of-nursery-rhymes?OCID=Scroll

http://mentalfloss.com/article/55035/dark-origins-11-classic-nursery-rhymes

A Matter of Scale

I was always intrigued by the question of scale and size in visual art.How big should a piece art be?Should it be monumental or miniscule? collossal or miniature?

Having identified that my works tended to be small scale,I had addressed this question to Sheikha Lateefa Maktoum, curator and founder of Tashkeel Gallery in Dubai many years ago." My works are small , do I need to be worried?Does an artwork necessarily have to be large to captivate an audience?"She had explained it to me in very simple words "Small is not inferior.It is a question of intention.If you want the viewer to be overpowered by the work , to look upto it in awe and wonder, it must be larger than life.On the other hand, if you want to evoke feelings of empowerment in the viewer, a sense of strength which comes while witnessing something small scale, the artwork must be small even miniscule. A strong statement need not always be big".I was very satisfied with this answer.

Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles's work Southern Cross made between 1969 and 1970, is only nine millimeters square in size.Yet this wooden cube created by Meireles by sanding down oak and pine tree to make a political comment , a caution against indifference, especially against indifference towards Brazil's fading indigenous population is a powerful piece of work.The cube  is  so apparently tiny that it impossible not to think initially of its size.This conceptual piece is meant to be placed in a large empty room . It literally lies at the viewer's feet and is barely visible. Yet, it is successful in commanding a presence , a position of authority ,in a seemingly vast space.

Cildo Meirles, "Sacred Cross", one section pine, one section oak 1969.

On the other hand monumental pieces of work like Andy Goldsworthy's land art invoke a feeling of eternity, the vastness of nature and the cosmos.

Andy Goldsworthy, S"now drift", carved into snow, Grise fiord, Ellesmere Island, 1989

The human body has been the point of reference for all measure of size and scale.Objects can be scaled according to the proportions of an adult viewer.Or scaled as per a child  or even that may not be human at all.It is a question of possession or being possesed.

Size, broadly defined as the relationship between the actual physical magnitude of a thing and how that magnitude is represented, depends on how size enables a material and physical entity to function convincingly as an artwork.

Scale therefore opens up an almost algorithmic process of recognizing not only how things and people occupy a given space in relation to one another also how artworks mediate the relations between things and people.


REFERENCE:

http://www.academia.edu/12048944/Scale_to_Size_An_Introduction

scale (proportions) has been emphasized on more than one occasion, the productionof scale often depends on various articulations of size which themselves are farfrom stable.

4

As Anne Wagner observes, enlarging or reducing the dimensions ofan object can take place according to the most rigorously observed standards, ‘yetthe

effects

 of these alterations are not necessarily either stable or predictable’.

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Furthercomplicating the discussion is the distinction between absolute dimensions, or whatmight be called explicit size, and implicit size, or what the arrangement of parts in agiven artwork suggests to a viewer about its proportions.