My work wants to express the present moment that is simple, alive and offering new experience
< I am currently at a place where I would like to compose artistic forms from the material and knowledge gathered from socially engaged art frames. Having been focused on leading groups into the creative experience for the past few years, my artistic journey unfolds as I now look to harvest some of the found knowledge and material to refine or respond to these findings in large multimodal installations/impressions as my next work. The found knowledge in the process could become applicable to research in deciphering the phenomenon of the creative experience.
Here as some highlights from my work from the most recent down to the past. > Gopika Dahanukar 2021
Socially Engaged Art Projects
The Lockdown Library Project was initiated to offer our friends from around the world a handmade book created from recycled papers and materials by Rachna to fill their lockdown stories in images, collage, photos, prose, poetry, or any other creative way and send the books back to us for an installation.
There were Zoom-led sessions by Gopika to creatively attune the participants in sensitizing them to each page to respond to that was made of different material. We had about a 100 books sent out and received back about half of those. The Installation with the books and wire was put together by Gopika on a wall offered by the Unity Pavilion in Auroville with limited lighting possibilities during this time. An event of poetry reading from these books was held gathering community members to share in the poems of participants expressed during the lockdown.
THE LOCKDOWN LIBRARY PROJECT
In Collaboration with Eco-Artist Rachna Toshniwal
keywords
lockdown
creative response handmade scrapbook
introspect
narrate
reclaim
transition
recover
share
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Poiesis
A Journal of the Arts and Communication
Volume 18 2021 EGS Press
THE WALL OF QUESTIONS
Interactive Creative Call
Supported by The Kanoria Center For the Arts
Ahmhedabad India
The Wall of Questions was an interactive creative call to the public at the Kanoria Center for the Art 19 Fair in Ahmedabad India. It was a project to gather the questions that were crucial to the participants at that moment. A powerful invitation that offered an opportunity for participants to express themselves freely without judgement in an evolutionary changing outcome over three days .
https://creativeyatra.com/news/kanoria-centre-set-stir-spirit-art-ahmedabad-art-19/
Immersive Art Installations
INNER SKY {chidakash}
LOTUS OF THE QUIET MIND
8 X 3ft Acetate
Portland Old Church 2016
Flower of Silence
7 x 3ft Acetate
BC Buddhist Festival 2017 Vancouver
HAND CUT PAPER + LIGHT artworks 2012- 2019
paper sun
paper moon
seeds of light
presence
meero
river of light
COLLAGE, PAINTING & POETRY
contemplative portraits
Mystic Fire
Acrylic on Canvas
Rising flames of color in being’s chamber of gold,
Hues singing of Spirit renewing all that’s old.
Laughter in gurgling currents that ceaselessly flow
In mystic tones enwrapping the quiet inner glow.
Breath of forms so delicate tinged in silence blue,
Quickening cells of truth, with energy ever new,
Murmuring secrets unraveled from Wisdom’s coat of sky,
And inner dialogue dipped in soul’s innocent dye.
Draping in reds intense, a world of whispering shadows,
Swaying figures green, reflections of blues and yellows,
Ochre, orange, and magenta tracing the fire ablaze
Of unflickering aspiration like the sun’s piercing rays.
O spirits of color, painting dreams of delight,
Of a new world afloat in the soul’s deepest height,
Promising Earth with songs of your future golden Dawn,
As the world’s bosom waits for the light to be born.
PHOTOGRAPHY & POETRY
Glorious Skies
Market Canopies in Light
She floats beneath heaven, speckled, color-fresh,
Sways on sun-dried ropes in a patterned mesh,
Singing silver and gold, shimmering skins of light,
Frees songs of silence in a moonstruck night.
She watches emerald billows, these shadows ever-changing,
Once faded rhythms re-echo with new arranging,
She instills alien light into lives of daily dust,
Freeing birds of longing from their cages of rust.
She thrills with blues and greens and vivid yellow’s sweep
Streams of fiery radiance, in dappled furrows deep.
She seeks to marry earth with the yearning sky above,
Freeing souls awaking to skies of brilliant Love.
Fly, soul, fly
Up starry slopes, on high,
To a seamless world of incessant Light
Where freedom, love, and joy
Glow deathless in that inner sky.
Silent Renewal
Dried Leaves
A leaf lies motionless, fallen from a tree,
barely touching earth’s warm-red bosom.
Its parched greenless cells yearn in flames of prayer
to rediscover a newer tomorrow.
Its dying veins still alive in woody fragrances,
invisible Breath swinging to spirit silence,
watching shadows in hushed quietude.
And straining to give voice to a song that sings
of a whirlpool of dreams longing to break free,
back to the green and gold of an ever-green tree
swaying under brooding skies of undying love.
Waves of gold from worlds afar
in streaming laughter come pouring down,
quenching with colour every pore that thirsts
and flowing warmth into its lonely skin.
And from the core of this new substance light,
a voice floats in remembering a tender song
that soothes the soul with a hope beyond.
O soul, cleave not to the clinging past,
redolent with memories of flower and spring.
Let go as the waters embrace you whole,
intact the memory of your path ahead,
offer yourself up to the flow of Time,
trusting That which survives death and decay,
ceaselessly preparing this
silent renewal.
Light Secrets
A Ray of light in silence overspilling speaks
Gushing forth from an unknown mystical world,
Straight like an arrow comes down marvelously
Guarding a secret in its tender touch
Lighting up life in colors
And coloring life in light.
Whispering in reflections it embraces matter,
Echoing through textures it follows a form,
Hiding layers within layers shadows invisible,
Revealing an outline, caressing contours
Dancing in its graceful curve
And curving in its graceful dance.
O Ray of light, you smile in poised silence
While matter is tickled by your searching beams,
Weaving gold and blue in creaseless harmony,
Reds feeling greens and blues longing for yellows,
Notes of colored laughter throb in my veins
While my whole being becomes your stage
For the unveiling dance of your divine secret.
