Page 38 - Dimple B Shah - Presentation-2019_Neat

Negotiating Purity - Albedo (Encountering Catharsis)
Filtering through light

Colour of Purity, Enlightenment, Higher state, Cleansing, Healing and Absolute truth,
Albedo /white is a colour of calmness and purity. My attachments and connection to
white colour goes from point, where my memory of childhood goes, when I used to
visit Jain Temple with my parents, almost everything in temple right from temple
building complex is made of white marble, Gods Idols are made of white marble and
Gods Idols are decorated in real silver foil and then most of the people wear white
cloth while offering prayers and then you see people doing rituals with white rice
almost everything the small piece of cloth wrapped on mouth by the monks
everything is white.

In this performance I tried to bring this pleasant serene spiritual & blissful experience
of my child hood by creating a meditative experiential environmental mode for my
audiences. I have grown up in environment where the aim of life is to achieve Kevala

jñāna which means omniscience is roughly translated as absolute knowledge or
supreme knowledge. Kevala jñāna is believed to be an intrinsic quality of all souls.
This quality is masked by karmic particles that surround the soul.
Achieving absolute knowledge of our true self and achieve a Nirvana (a state of no life
and death evading the cycle of rebirth) is essential to understand existence of self.
Through process of rituals this state of Mind, body and soul goes in process of
consciousness and it represented by colour white and light. My focus was to attempt
and try to get sense and idea of true self which is equal to light, Sanctity, purification,
solitude, seeing oneself, healing, rituals, meditative, filtration and catharsis and
attaining state of trance, Blissfulness, ecstasy, oneness with universe are the key
central element focused in my performance.

The performance was about attaining Catharsis through various ritual processes to
enter into stages of ritualistic action and meditative mode help audiences to
encounter their true self, it was an experiential and healing in nature focused on both
individual one to one interaction and community interaction and healing. The most
important part of performance was performing these rituals which will involve all the
five senses and create a meditative environment. The response of audiences was
incredible I had to extend my performance for one hour more as my audiences were
waiting to experience themselves.