The form of this sculpture is based on the Bikram pose sasangasana. The self-proclaimed guru of Bikram Yoga, Bikram Choudhury, has been criticised for exploiting the cultural and economic capital of yoga, profiting in the spiritual marketplace and embodying a Hollywood lifestyle that includes prosecution for sexual harassment.
This sculpture seeks to embody the complexities of modern spirituality through the appropriation of esoteric practices, the slippage of guru and deity, and the relationship of guru and disciple within methods of devotional practices. By using heterogeneous and repurposed material from the culture of the hippie era, and the current yoga movement, I aim to examine aspects of pop culture yoga and the new wave self care movement as a simulacrum of lost hope, illusory dreams and shattered utopias.
Min Wong is a sculpture and installation artist who investigates reconstructed counterculture accoutrements from the 1960s and 1970s spiritual movements as a simulacrum for utopian concerns. Her installations aim to identify new systems of interrelation with the present and appropriation of self-help strategies within the critique of contemporary life. Min attempts to reinstate the potency of objects of ‘commodified self-awareness’, and takes an ironic view of the contemporary dilemma of spirituality. Using the studio as a faux Bikram yoga room, her sculptures and installations consider the ‘kitsch mystical experience’ and become an interplay between visionary imagination and cultural invention.
Min has participated in international residencies in Spain, China and Los Angeles and exhibited recently at MARS Gallery in Melbourne, Fontanelle Gallery, Brandiil Library and Art Centre, Los Angeles and Hatched, PICA.
steel, paint, leather string, rivets
77 x 60 x 80 cm
Finalist
Judges of the 2018 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize: Michael Lynch AO CBE (Australian Arts administrator, former Director of Sydney Opera House and former CEO of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, Hong Kong) and Amanda Love (Director Loveart, independent Art Advisory).
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