Behind the smoke screen: Jitish Kallat's piece at Galerie Daniel Templon Paris

I saw this amazing piece of artwork in Paris at Galerie Daniel Templon by Jitish Kallat (Mumbai born 1974) which made me think about all the political dogma and smokescreens that hide people from their true course.

The piece of art was a screen made of steam.  Upon the screen there was writing projected.  For a while I didn't really know what the writing said.  Then I saw the word 'HITLER'  I looked more closely and saw that it was a letter from Gandhi to Hitler, dated 1939, urging him to reconsider violent means just before the second world war.

 For me this work of art made me think about the spiritual realm: with its flimsy paper almost transcendental... and words almost ghostly in their realm between the deeply hidden truths of our mystery and the external conformity of our government and formal learning. 

This flimsy, ethereal letter is also written by a modern hero, which Gandhi was, treading into the visionary quest of non-violent action, setting our path to transforming the world. 

  

Jitish Kallat, Galerie Daniel Templon

Hans Christian Anderson once said: "My life is a fairy tale"  What he meant by this was that as the protagonist of his own life, he had to overcome the very obstacles that the heroes of fairy tales must encounter.  Joseph Campbell, expert of mythologies, believed that a major problem in the modern day world is our failure to activate our own inner hero within.  When we do not, despots such as Hitler can lead us astray to follow a path of destruction, guising their evil in smokescreens. 

Campbell speaks of our alienation from the myth, because the imagery is so antiquated.  The only way we can find the hero within is to follow our bliss.

Joseph Campbell 'Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls'

Any action that has a positive effect on human evolution is heroic.  A hero has to learn to take a route away from a conformist path.  He/she has to learn to listen to intuition, NOT a government or a religion.  If we do not do this, if we do not hear this wisdom of the heart, if for one minute, we let it drop, then we have capitulated with the devil.  The result is a tyrant like HITLER, who has taken control of your true authenticity.

To find the myth you are living now, myths must deal with the cosmology of the day.  A myth is actually a metaphor or symbol of the meeting point between your inner world and the outer physical world.  The journey of the hero must be in a currently recognizable world.  Picasso, Matisse, Brancussi, managed to present myths into a modern world, as did James Joyce in his Ulysses.  A mythological image that has to be explained to the brain is not working.  

Budhism and Hinduism have mythical figures that represent these deep inner processes.  The path from ego to love, is represented by these dogs (below) who guard the gates to heaven.  These dogs are  symbolic of the way to heaven on earth.   The dogs seemed to be saying 'Keep Out' and hold up a paw.  In fact they are merely keeping out ego.  For the only way to love is the overcoming of the ego.  In fact it was the Book of Thomas, where it is said 'The kingdom of heaven is spread upon the earth here and now and people do not see it'

It is mythologies that build a whole civilization.  A myth is a place between the deep mystery 'that which words and thoughts do never reach' and an outer world of aesthetic contractions of time and space.  The people in myth travel journeys on which they evolve: a personified culture in its flourishing.  First there is a call to adventure, a restlessness.  The hero must break from its past, its clinging to the known.  There are mentors or fairy godmothers to give the hero courage and wisdom.  There is a gateway into a new boundless place, beyond which is a point of no return, full of trials and tests.  The hero must learn to listen to only the forces of its inner being.  

When the hero meets love, the very heart of mystery is opened.  Mystery begins when two beings meet and feel an experience of truth.  In writing his 'Foundation of Morality' Schopenhauer said: "How is it that another human being can so participate in the danger of another that forgetting his own protection he moves spontaneously into the other?"  Campbell says that "the first law of this metaphysical impulse that is deeper than the experience of separateness is where you realize that you and the other ARE one"

So overall, I was reminded of the hero's journey when I saw this work by Jitish Kallat.  I felt it a great piece, very moving and a modern artwork about a modern day absolute hero, illustrating this very mystical transcendence: the letter upon ethereal steam: which shows this crossing between a physical, conscious world of ego and the message of peace and love so masterly left for us by Mahatma Gandhi on his heroic journey.