The Rubin’s Mandala Lab is an immersive experience that explores anger, attachment, envy, ignorance, and pride (photo courtesy Rubin Museum of Art)
FREE EXHIBITION TOUR: MANDALA LAB ANNIVERSARY
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, October 21, free, 7:15
212-620-5000
rubinmuseum.org
The Rubin Museum is celebrating the one-year anniversary of its interactive Mandala Lab with a guided tour on October 21 at 7:15 as part of its weekly free K2 Friday Night, which also includes tabla player DJ Roshni Samlal, access to all galleries, and a special cocktail menu.
In Buddhism, the mandala is a symbolic image of the universe, a painting, scroll, or sand sculpture that offers the ability to contemplate transformation and enlightenment. The Mandala Lab, subtitled “Where Emotions Can Turn to Wisdom,” consists of four quadrants of experiences that explore five afflictive emotions, or kleshas — anger, envy, pride, ignorance, and attachment — through multiple senses, each associated with a color and an element, either earth, air, fire, water, or space. The project design was inspired by the Rubin’s seventeenth-century Tibetan Sarvavid Vairochana Mandala, which contains circles and squares, the Five Wisdom Buddhas, and representations of earthly elements. “All great art helps us see each other from the inside out. But Buddhist art goes a step further,” Rubin head of programs Dawn Eshelman explains in a promotional video. “It provides a kind of visual to help us survive in uncertain times.”
In “Check Your Pride,” you place a token in a slot with such statements as “I think I am better than others” or “I feel proud of achievements I haven’t earned” while standing in front of a mirror. Palden Weinreb’s Untitled (Coalescence) gives you the chance to let go of envy by sitting on a cushion and breathing in time with a circular light sculpture that dims and glows. A touch screen allows you to share your thoughts on ignorance.
Attachment is tied to smell in an installation comprising six stations featuring videos by a half dozen visual artists accompanied by a corresponding scent. Each short video about personal memories, made by Laurie Anderson (Uncle Allen), Sanford Biggers (Joanin Temple for Mandala Lab), Tenzin Tsetan Choklay (1994), Amit Dutta (The Scent of Earth), Wang Yahui (The Smell of a Rice Field), and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Waterfall), features a related scent created by master perfumer Christophe Laudamiel that you get to guess at the end of the two-minute film.
You can bang away your anger in a gong orchestra, for which composers and musicians Billy Cobham, Sheila E., Peter Gabriel, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Sarah Hennies, Huang Ruo, Shivamani, and Bora Yoon have chosen eight unique gongs and mallets, manufactured by Ryan Shelledy or Matt Nolan and made of brass, bronze, or silver nickel, that visitors are invited to activate, following these instructions: “1. Imagine your anger. 2. Gently strike the gong in front of you one time using the mallet to the right. 3. Raise the handle to the left to partially submerge the gong in the water. 4. Listen to the sound of your anger transform. 5. Let the sound fade, and for an added challenge, watch the water return to stillness. 6. When finished, lower the handle to return the gong back to its starting position.”
While at the Rubin, be sure to see the other exhibitions as well: “Gateway to Himalayan Art,” “The Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room,” “Tales of Muted Spirits — Dispersed Threads — Twisted Shangri-La,” “Healing Practices: Stories from Himalayan Americans,” “Shrine Room Projects: Rohini Devasher/Palden Weinreb,” and “Masterworks: A Journey Through Himalayan Art.”