An outcome exhibition (KIAR 2022-May)
Venue Siddhartha Art Gallery-Annex, BabarMahal Revisited, Kathmandu
Date: 28th and 29th May 2022

Stephanie O’Connor (Visual artist from the USA)

The Indian headdress is real. I ordered it from a Native American Non-Government Organization. It arrived as a kit with instructions and I assembled it together and began painting figurative studies from photographs I took of myself wearing the headdress or war bonnet which is the tribal term. The body of my figures are postures mimicking Hindu drawings, all ( unintentional ) variations of Siva. The three chief divinities in Hinduism are Vishnu, Brahma and Siva. Siva, the destroyer, unlike the other divinities does not have a specific personification. Siva can also represent acts of voluntary contribution. To perform Siva is to offer acts of service. To tie the works together, I referenced attributes from my astrological chart that help create a distance from this process of making peace with my relationship with both kinds of Siva, which can otherwise show up as unwanted cyclical patterns in our lives.