"The Sky above My House: Performance and Exhibition by Nikunja"
2001-11-07 until 2001-11-30
University of Geneva, UniMail Central Hall
Geneva, , CH Switzerland

This international project includes 20 artists from Japan, USA, France, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Holland, India, Phillipines, New Zealand and Venezuela. The opening of the exhibition climaxed with a performance on November 6 in the enormus central hall of the Uni-Mail.

In the large space a series of table-objects constructed from recycled industrial materials were installed. Each table was occupied by a dancer/model. Each table was connected to a theme representing an existential aspect of human life, in a time subjective and universal. These themes are Birth and Death; Mother and Child (the virgin); Transcendence; Longing, History and Memory, Present and Future (idol 4U); Love; Physical Bodies of the Human Being; Reconsiliation; Man and Woman; Meeting-unification-separation; Time; Justice; Humility; Grace; and Vision of Divine Man.

With each dancer/model the artist creates a painting in oil on each table. Prior to the creation-performance for each work, a solo-choreography was prepared. The dancer-models were selected from the reception of video documentation and other documents of their work (photos, curriculum vitae, etc).

In the cooperation with each artist the artists create a precise physical and spiritual identification with the theme for the place and the time in the vision. For several months the artists worked alone on their themes in their respective countries and in their respective circumstances. They collected experiences: experiences of movement, of forms, of ideas, of emotions, etc.

The participating artists all met just days before the performance, where they obtained a deeper knowledge of the broader themes and of their vision towards the project. They became confident with their our inner identification with the main theme. The artists established a spiritual relation to the existential base of the theme.

When the individual artists met in the act of their performance, they revealed and combined this knowledge to the knowledge of the others: the musicians to the dancers, the dancers to the painter, the painter to the video, the video to the audience, everyone was in an intensive exchange with the other. This released a unique energy through creation where the individual went beyond the known, the foreseen and surrendered to the unknown, the unexperienced. In this moment of pure creation, where the individual works with a great artistic risk, the secret of our human existence can be felt and experienced.

There is no predominant creator, but a predominant spirit of creation, where the little interests for recognition, for success, etc have no more importance, where there is a celebration of the pure human spirit offered and participated with the people in the audience, as important as the artists. The power of creation can be liberated from specific styles and cultures.

Nikunja views art as a pure and realistic way to the recognition of the higher spirit of the human existence. Art is not mere entertainment, philosophy or ideology. It is the existential experience of the secrets of the human as such.

Nikunja sees his work as a processus of incarnated research where the material receives the evolutionary spiritual through the energy of the theme. It is being realised and becoming evident in the presence of the mere material of the painting. There is the unification between the physical and the spiritual, because there is no distinction between the two.

Through Nikunjas artwork he wishes to develop an intelligence which transcends the analytical mind into a higher form of human perception which is more precise and of a vaster awareness. It is the base for an evolution towards a more subtle and more powerful human being and a more profound realisation of the human existential reality.

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