Mural Concept

I was in the group with Jess, Jeff, Keith and Nick. For our mural, we decided to work with the theme of the human figure, a concept which was extended to movement/dance. The body was segmented into five pieces, and each group member worked on their respective part. The aesthetic incorporated anachronistic juxtaposition as well, as an expression of the gradually accelerating blur between organic and inorganic elements of humanity.

For my segment, I chose to work off the idea of the Shiva Nataraja, the Hindu deity whose cosmic dance maintains the balance between creation and destruction -- or, for that matter, any of those binary elements which are in an engagement of self-perpetuating opposition (such as the inorganic and the organic, or the natural and the constructed, as focused on in our mural.) I chose to represent him drawing upon one of Alphonse Mucha's art nouveau posters (a personal influence in a fair amount of my work) for his dreadlocks, a portion of his iconography which also plays a fairly large role in the god's mythology. For his face, I drew upon a classic Indian statue of him -- in which the role of technology and inorganic creation is implicit.