New York’s Rubin Museum of Art hosts an unusual spiritual and creative experience – Architectural Digest India

The bright and airy 2,700 square-foot space was designed by architects Miriam Peterson and Nathan Rich of the Brooklyn-based architect and design firm Peterson Rich office. Their design was inspired by mandalasbuddhist visual symbolsmeant to be contemplated during meditation. A geometric diagram of the universe, a mandala usually has four quadrants and a circle at its centre. Tibetan mandalas also contain deities, with a principal deity at the heart of the mandala. In this case, it's the Sarvavid Vairochana Mandala, with the deity Maha Vairochana at its centre. The remodelled third floor of the museum, a rectangle with a spiral staircase at its centre, lent itself perfectly to the concept.

Like a mandala, the space is divided into four quadrants pointing in four directions and a central space. Each quadrant is divided by metal mesh screens that encourage openness. This space is designed for collective experience. The floor is deliberately more open and connected than the other five levels of the museum. Individual spaces are separated from one another by a translucent scrim, allowing for interactive experiences that are physically distinct but visually interconnected, explain the designers.

In the West Quadrant, visitors will encounter a curved counter custom made by PRO with six stations, each with a scent selected by an artist and created by master perfumer Christophe Laudamiel. Visitors will be invited to contribute their emotional response to each scent, then view a two-minute video created by the artist about their memory attached to this scent. By watching these videos and reading previous visitors memories associated with the same smell, visitors will perceive how diverseand sometimes radically differentour reactions can be to the same stimulus.

Each quadrant of the lab is associated with a different colour, emotion (keisha), element and wisdom. Each is home to unique experiences associated with those emotions, and encourages a new learning and understanding from participants. The experiences were created in consultation with collaborators from around the world, including spiritual healers, artists and even a professor of psychology.

Visitors get to witness the work of multidisciplinary artists, including Indian experimental filmmaker Amit Dutta and percussionist Shivamani, musician Peter Gabriel, video installation artist Wang Yahui, and even master perfumer Christopher Laudamiel. In one of the quadrants, New-York based visual artist Palden Weinreb creates a sculpture that pulses with light in pace with synchronized breathing. This is just one of the many incredible experiences, including a gong orchestra, that the lab promises. Each activity aims to encourage participants to see, smell, touch and work through and process difficult emotions like pride, attachment, envy, anger and ignorance, and find ways to develop calm and connection.

As we start to see some light at the end of the Covid tunnel, it's connections like these and spaces like these that will continue to heal the world, for a long time to come.

Mandala Lab at the Rubin Museum of Art runs until 1 October, 2031.

Continued here:

New York's Rubin Museum of Art hosts an unusual spiritual and creative experience - Architectural Digest India

Related Posts

Comments are closed.