Mandala

(J. Merrell, born in 1983, received her artistic training at the Art Institute of Boston and the Tamarind Institute of Lithography in Albuquerque, NM; she is currently living and working in Somerville, MA, in the vicinity of Boston.)

J. Merrell uses the motif of the mandala for her artistic interpretation. The word ‘mandala’, which has its etymological roots in Sanskrit, can best be translated as ‘circle’; it denotes a circular (sometimes also square) symbolic picture with a defined centre. The mandala is used in various cultures, in particular in Hinduism and Buddhism, but also in Indian cultural circles, as a mystical symbol, religious symbol and object of meditation. In the extremely diverse mandalas, abstract forms, geometrical figures, written characters, but also totally concrete objects (things, plants, animals, people) can be depicted.

The artist, who herself has epilepsy, chose (according to her own statement) this form of expression following her preoccupation with the theories of C.G. Jung about the mandala motif – the mandala as a symbol of healing, as a symbol in which the conscious and the unconscious come face to face. Quotation from the artist: “I felt Jungs theories related to my feelings about having epilepsy and because of this began to work in a circular format. This print is more literal take on these themes, using images of a mans head beeing wraped in gauze....”

Separate from this subjective interpretation of the artist, the viewer sees in this print the organ affected by the disease, the head, drastically presented as “damaged” and injured. That such an ‘injury’ (in this case: ‘epilepsy’) can manifest (and be caused) in very diverse ways, is made visible by means of 7 different bandages. Not just these bandages, but also the facial expressions of the ill person differ between themselves. Each individual bandaged head is delimited and separated from adjacent ones; however all are connected by a centre of geometrical figures with a uniform underlying colour (blue) and by dotted rays, pathways, at the circumference. Epilepsy, as one of the jointly depicted persons, is a defined disease with a root common to all of them, and, medically speaking, possibly with a common pathogenesis (although not a single aetiology), however the form of its course and its consequences creates an individual life path for each affected individual.

The artistic presentation of epilepsy as a mandala can thus, as shown by this example, to all intents and purposes be a starting point for meditative reflection.