Jeffrey Schiff

  

Everything Chidambaram
 
   

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Jump to: Everywhere Chidambaram | Everything Chidambaram | Everyday Chidambaram | Vedic Drawings (Yajnayudhani) | Puja Drawings | Praying Project

Year: 1998
Materials: ayurvedic soap, brass bowls, water, rice, 9 grains, dried flowers and roots, grasses, neem leaves, mango leaves, turmeric, various spices, ghee, camphor, dirt, cow dung
Dimensions: 8" x 18" x 25"

Everything Chidambaram 1998

Everything Chidambaram derives from the practice in Hindu devotional ritual (puja) of offering foods and other substances to the deity, as prasad. These offerings, which include rice, 9 grains, dried flowers and roots, water, grasses, turmeric and various spices, ghee, and cow dung, seem to be more or less representative of all the products of the natural/agricultural world. The sculpture is a cast block of whiteMedimix soap set on the floor, in which "everything” from the world -- which is to say all the ingredients used in puja -- has been included. A basin of water is placed in front of the cast block. The viewer is invited to wash with the soap, and in so doing, wash with everything in the world. Everything Chidambaram (consumer model) is a consumer version of the larger piece. Soap mixed with all the puja materials is pressed into consumer-size bars of soap, available in white, pink, or green.

The color 50-page book Everywhere Chidambaram from Nature Morte Press is available for $12.95 + tax/shipping at Printed Matter Inc., 195 Tenth Avenue New York, NY 10011 T: 212 925 0325, http://printedmatter.org