Rubin Museum

Art and Acts of Resistance at the Rubin Museum. A fabulous place. I enjoyed it so much more today than I did on my first visit last year. I found the entire place inspiring, relaxing, soothing and hopeful during this week of impeachment hearings and mass shootings.

After purchasing your ticket and checking your coat you enter a large room dominated by a spiral staircase. We found The Wheel Of Intentions waiting and followed the instructions…

My words, my Intention is to Be Happy.

The words were then projected onto the underside of the staircase to float up, up , up

To the 6th floor where Clapping With Stones could be found.

You can interpret this any way you want. Broken vessels filled with what looks like ash.

Burn the Diaries from Pallovi Paul

According to the Rubin’s website: Burn the Diaries (2014–2019) is inspired by the personnel file of former Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent Noor Inayat Khan, who vanished during World War II while serving as a spy for the British government. Khan’s body was never recovered, and her flawed file is laced with contradictions and missing gaps concerning her disappearance and suspicious death, with several versions of the story recounted.

Pallavi Paul takes and subverts Khan’s story as part of a larger inquiry into the role of official archives in producing transparent evidence. Her investigation takes the form of a monumental 110-foot silk scroll inscribed with multiple accounts of Khan’s death in Morse code.

Paul questions the role of official archives to tell a transparent story, which is especially timely if you see the new movie The Report with Annette Benning and Adam Driver.

Then the pile of books with a half round mirror on the ceiling where we took one of our rare selfies.

And something we both liked, the remain of an earthquake…

Tsherin Sherpa (b. 1968, Kathmandu, Nepal)

Following the devastating earthquake that struck Nepal on April 25, 2015, Tsherin Sherpa returned to his home city of Kathmandu and created Wish-fulfilling Tree (2016). He worked with local craftsmen to create a seven-layer bronze mandala. Both a memorial to the destruction wrought by the earthquake and a wish for the future, the mandala is surrounded by rubble, debris, and found objects. In tandem, he continued his longstanding painting practice, represented by two works from the series UFO (Unidentified Fettering Organization) (2016).

We sat comfortably for a while watching this peaceful film –

Shiva Ahmadi (b. 1975, Tehran, Iran)

On view October 11, 2019

Shiva Ahmadi references the miniature painting and iconography of various religious traditions and contemporary cultural events to reflect on universal human conditions. Her video Ascend (2017) poetically reflects on the global refugee crisis, while Lotus (2014) features imagery from a watercolor by the artist and two Buddha sculptures from the Asia Society Museum, New York. The videos will be presented in succession; Ascend is on view until April 6, 2020, and Lotus begins April 8, 2020.