This week, as Lent begins, I’ve taken down my visiting See from the college chapel, along with other pictures in there, to bring our habitation of the space into the foreground. Taking things down, and presenting a ‘visual silence’ (thanks, David Baker!) is different to the tradition of veiling icons or statuary in churches during Lent. There, the symbolism stems from a contemplation of our separation from God, a re-enacting of the curtain that veiled the most holy place in the temple – in order to prepare the penitential soul before the dramatic unveiling and curtain-splitting of Easter. Here, I’m more interested in the awareness of how we move and inhabit the space holistically, rather than in the inside/outside symbolic dichotomy of space. There’s still us before God, but it’s pared down – literally flattened to a groundedness and simplicity of relating.
The intention behind this is to raise awareness of the primacy of relating to the chapel space with our bodies – over and above relating to the space with our intellectual assent and engagement. Spiritual life has this plane, and because we’re British and in an educational establishment, we often forget it. But my noticing of college life, of the outworking dimensions of worship and study, is its ‘3D-ness’ : the sensory aspects of eating, walking, talking, singing, sitting, standing. To be spiritual here is to be corporeally involved.
To highlight this, my latest work Lenten Spring, will gradually unfurl in the college corridor outside the canteen (see here for importance of corridor engagement). Currently empty, each day new growth will appear in a photographic sequence of bulbs growing, both at ground level and from above. At a later stage, 4 abstract pieces that celebrate biblical expressions of the elements will appear. Both sequence and stopping points, together with text, are hopefully catalysts for passing viewers to make their own connections and interpretations. Thinking and sense are thus paralleled over time and space to create a new experience which expands both. After the black and white, bring on the colour!
Header image: Lenten Spring (work in progress), 2014, by Sheona Beaumont.
