Showing posts with label photo exhibition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photo exhibition. Show all posts

Monday, 12 May 2014

I'm a Mexican Buddhist...in LA/LA Land (video)

Crystal Quintero, Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly (Part 2)
"LA/LA"? Welcome to LA LA Land: Los Angeles, Latin America (sweetnrawme.com)

If I were Frieda Kahlo
LOS ANGELES, Latin America - The Getty is preparing to launch an art exhibit that accentuates the embarrassment of artistic riches we have in Los Angeles, which not everyone realizes is in Latin America.

It is for a lot of reasons. Not only did it used to be Mexico until European Invaders during U.S. War on the Spanish annexed it like Ukraine, it is again predominantly Latin American.

Buddhists discovered America before Columbus
Although Asians are the fastest growing ethnicity in the U.S., more Latinas and Latinos live in California than any other group.

Most are not Mexican Buddhists anymore, but a lot are. And it's amazing to find out that there is a connection between the Native Americans, First Nations people, and Mexicans (Aztecs, Maya or Mayans, Toltecs, Olmecs, Incas, and many others) from neighboring Mexico, Mesoamerica, and Central America.
 
The famous "Mayan Calendar" is Aztec
It will be a long time before that information goes mainstream.

But it takes awhile for the truth to surface. In 1885 Edward P. Vining published the facts about inglorious Columbus and the Afghan Buddhist missionaries, led by the Chinese Buddhist monk Hwui Shan (Hui Shen), who arrived in America in the 5th century. America is the Fusang they discovered. So everyone will have to settle for the Getty's Pacific Standard Time 2017.
Getty Foundation (getty.edu)
TheGetty and the Getty Foundation: Art and Art History in Los Angeles (getty.edu)
If I were a leftist Aztec warrior marching through the streets of Los Angeles (latimes.com)
 
In the fall of 2011 Los Angeles celebrated the launch of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980, an unprecedented collaboration of arts institutions across Southern California joining together to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene.
 
If I were Irish-Mexican like Peter (as Che)*
Yet it was 230 years earlier, in 1781, that the city of Los Angeles itself was born when El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles [de Porciúncula] was founded as part of New Spain. [A pueblo like that of the Puebloan Buddhists!]

Thus, while Los Angeles [the "City of Angels"] often represents the vanguard of contemporary culture in the United States, it is at the same time a Latin American city of long duration.
 
If I went to BofA or KA
Today, nearly half of the population of Los Angeles has roots in Latin America, contributing to Southern California as a lively center of artistic production and a natural nexus of cultural creativity between North and South. 
 
In recent years a number of exhibitions in the Americas and Europe have offered an introduction to the original and varied heritage of Latin America and the Latin American diaspora.

Now there is an opportunity for a broader and deeper examination of this art through a renewed collaboration by the Pacific Standard Time partners. In the process, Southern California will play a significant role in the research and presentation of Latin American art. More

Buddhism was in Mexico before Christianity (PRI video)

Wednesday, 16 April 2014

Enter the Mandala: Cosmic Mind Maps

Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Assistant Curator Dr. Jeff Durham (SFAAM)
Buddha icon in Tawang district, Arunachal Pradesh, India (Appaji/flickr.com)
A mandala in Tibetan Vajrayana meditation serves as a kasina (indiebookevent.com)
Buddhist and Hindu hallway, Norton Simon, Pasadena (Christian DeLao/judasmaiden15/flickr)

Enter the Mandala: Mental Maps and Cosmic Centers in Himalayan Buddhism

Jaws of Samsara, Bhavacakra (thangka-mandala)
Dr. Jeff Durham, Assistant Curator of Himalayan Art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, will explore the possibility of re-creating a Buddhist experience without years of meditative discipline:

Mandalas are geometric maps of Vajrayana Buddhist visionary worlds [planes of existence in Buddhist cosmology]. Appearing in both painting and sculpture, mandalas typically consist of nested squares and circles.

These geometric forms define the center of the cosmos and the four cardinal directions in the sky/space (akasha). Minutely detailed and saturated with philosophical meaning, mandalas are a feast for the eyes and mind.

For Buddhist meditators, however, they are not just images to view, but also worlds to enter. To work with a mandala, practitioners first re-create it in their mind’s eye then imaginatively enter its world.
Free with admission (limited seating). Member seating 3:30 pm; general seating at 3:45 pm.
  
Rise of Shramanic tradition
Wisdom Quarterly edit of Dharmic Religions (7th to 5th centuries BCE)
The Buddha taught mostly in Magadha