Meditation Studio
installed in Zilkha Gallery, Middletown, CT.
This video installation explores how Yoga and Ayurveda are absorbed into the project of Hindu nationalism in India, while also being co-opted by new-age spiritualism in the West. I transformed th gallery into a kitschy meditation studio by playing new age spiritual music, lighting incense, and projecting a moving mandala on the wall. I made the mandala using hour-long instructional videos of Narendra Modi doing yoga. Hence, the audience was unknowingly consuming content sponsored by a fascist state in the name of spirituality. Additionally, I set up 3 video stations on the floor with headphones that explored different aspects of the spiritual fascism upheld by Hindu nationalism. One video depicted a white woman meditating with Modi’s speech about the importance of Yoga playing in the background. Another video consisted of a pseudo-scientific sequence with spoken excerpts from a cow activism NGO about the value of cow-urine in medical treatments. In this installation, I wanted to interpolate the viewers as consumers of ethnonationalist propaganda that is disguised as new age spiritualism.
installed in Zilkha Gallery, Middletown, CT.
This video installation explores how Yoga and Ayurveda are absorbed into the project of Hindu nationalism in India, while also being co-opted by new-age spiritualism in the West. I transformed th gallery into a kitschy meditation studio by playing new age spiritual music, lighting incense, and projecting a moving mandala on the wall. I made the mandala using hour-long instructional videos of Narendra Modi doing yoga. Hence, the audience was unknowingly consuming content sponsored by a fascist state in the name of spirituality. Additionally, I set up 3 video stations on the floor with headphones that explored different aspects of the spiritual fascism upheld by Hindu nationalism. One video depicted a white woman meditating with Modi’s speech about the importance of Yoga playing in the background. Another video consisted of a pseudo-scientific sequence with spoken excerpts from a cow activism NGO about the value of cow-urine in medical treatments. In this installation, I wanted to interpolate the viewers as consumers of ethnonationalist propaganda that is disguised as new age spiritualism.
