I will go back to the great sweet mother,

Mother and lover of men, the sea.

I will go down to her, I and no other,

Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me.

Words by A.C. Swinburne

Name: Mrs Alfrida Konstantia Brogren Andersson

Titanic Victim

Born: Wednesday 25th December 1872

Country of Origin: Sweden

Age: 39 years (Female)

Last Residence: in Kisa Östergötland Sweden

3rd Class Passengers

First Embarked: Southampton on Wednesday 10th April 1912

Ticket No. 347082 , £31 5s 6d

Destination: Winnipeg Manitoba Canada

Died in the Titanic disaster (15th April 1912)

Body Not Recovered

Acknowledgements

Ida Straus

Mavis Henslow

Cye Elliott

Pryere

W.W.

Roderick Bowen

Maria, John & Natasza

David Livingstone

Ray & Candy Taylor

Barry Moulton

Encyclopedia Titanic

RMS Titanic Centenary Project - 12/1600

Photography by Pryere

♫ - Paintings and Music by Sophie Shapiro

for Flickriver - Sophie Shapiro

.

Another of the sculptures in the current outdoor exhibition at Chatsworth - Radical Horizons, The Art of Burning Man at Chatsworth

This colourful creature seems to be leaping/flying through the air, the following information is taken from the Chatsworth website...

Transmutation invites us to reflect on what would happen if we brought back extinct species through genetic cloning. In this exercise, the artists Arturo Gonzalez and Maru Izaguirre question whether it is ethical to play at being gods and whether this return of extinct species, such as the sabre-toothed tiger, will give rise to new beings created by man.

Transmutation is a larger-than-life manifestation of the brightly coloured Mexican folk art sculptures called Alebrijes. Alebrijes traditionally feature mythical creatures that combine elements of several different animals. The skeleton of this creature is made of fibreglass and metal, while the outside is adorned with traditional Mexican patterns in acrylic and fluorescent paint.

Facebook ~ Twitter

I'm out of time and with a creative block. So this picture is not conceptual, as I like to do. I am enjoying making friends with you on Flickr, so thank you for your loving words.

Inside all of us, there is a shadow.

This shadow envelops us, burn us.

But only with the fire that we can transmute our death into our life.

WOW! Great news... My little film just hit over 2000 views in 10 days... that's phenomenal for showing an art film on YouTube.... Happy Happy...

SleepyOwl says: Oh, yes, the depth of the music layering really complements the depth of your personal revelatory journeying... You are so generous, Mary, to invite us to witness this transmutation of sorrow and painful memories. The video felt like an exorcism viewed through a kaleidoscope with its richness of shapes and colors, and at other moments there was the simple purity of free-fall flight -- into healing... I played the video a bunch of times -- first with the sound only, then with only the images, then integrated. Then on the fourth viewing I was struck with the message of the universality and the complexity and the power and the joy of human sensuality.

The moon has awoken with the sleep of the sun

Light has been broken and the spell has begun

Step into another realm, it's a dark night

You never know what you’ll see or you might find

Open up your mind and pay close attention

Invite the ghosts, engage your senses

Light your candles and watch the room glow

Moon glow outside your window

In the shadows the music will find you

With a rhyme designed to bind you

While I invoke intense attractions

Positive and negative reactions

Transmutation, divination

It’s all about the imagination

Interpretation, intoxication

Lay back in the cut and feel the vibration

Real Name: Ronald Raymond

Gender: Male

Height: 6'2 (As Firestorm); (6'1 as Raymond)

Weight: 202 lbs (92 kg) (As Firestorm); 179 lbs (As Raymond)

Firestorm is a nuclear-powered super-hero with the ability to transmute elements. The Firestorm Matrix is a composite of multiple people bonded together, originally high school student Ronnie Raymond controlling the body and nuclear physicist Professor Martin Stein giving direction as an additional consciousness.

I'd love to hear what you think.

Disinformation.

Gespecialiseerde geschiedenis vervolgstudie classicistische talen onderzoek taalkundige variëteiten lagen professionele ironie intense factoren,

традиции произведения тотальный охват предыдущих стихов универсальные конструкции аранжировки неисчерпаемые рассказы вязание композиционных контекстов,

mètres transmutés effets discordants formes comiques inventives processus humains thèmes intéressants lignes formelles œuvres élégiaques simultanées,

ukonvensjonelle skalaer revmatiske viser evolusjoner institusjoner som reflekterer avganger skarpsindig rekkefølge importerende katastrofer rasende forbrytelser,

υποκριτες χαραδες τεκμηρια τιμωριες αντιστοιχες ενοποιησεις τμημα χαος ανακατεματα διακρισεις διαμερισματα μελη,

przeobrażenia formy pytania raporty ważne naciski ciągłe narracje opozycje rozkazy sprawy niekontrolowane zarozumiałość przykłady,

嫌な方法慣性は説得力のある方向を示します表現された感覚は壮大なジレンマを課します独り言は絶え間なく書き直しているモンスターの死を報告します報告.

Steve.D.Hammond.

USA, Nevada, Clark County, Gold Butte National Monument. Sections of large petrified wood tree trunk logs from ancient forests.

Tau Lewis’ hands-on process of making is committed to healing personal and collective traumas, especially in relation to histories and lived experiences within the African diaspora. In Symphony, reclaimed clothing and fabrics have been repurposed into an expressive portrait of a “mutable being devoid of gender, that can transmute into blossoms”. A clairvoyant spirit connecting geographies, souls and time, both earthly and ancestral, Symphony has eyes formed of seashells and arms welcoming in an open embrace. Reflecting on non-gendered motherhood and gardens as sources of knowledge and growth, the work envisions a world of radical care, self-reservation and resilience in which joy, freedom and triumphant love are nurtured and shared. --- --- --- canadianart.ca/features/tau-lewis-groundations/

Real Name: Evan McCulloch

Occupation: Professional Criminal

Gender: Male

Height: 5'11

Weight: 173lbs (78kg)

Mirror Master is a criminal who fights the Flash as a member of the Rogues Gallery. He was at one point a professional assassin in Scotland, until he received the equipment of his predecessor Sam Scudder. He possesses a Mirror Gun that allows him to travel into an alternate dimension from any reflective surface, appear in many places at once, and perform other physical transmutations.

I'd love to hear what you think

Just in time for Bionifight's closing, I managed to put together a MOC of my (second?) favorite character from the RPG: Virse, Toa of Sand. I've been wanting to MOC her for months, and now that I finally got some (knockoff) tan CCBS, I could finish her. I have to say I'm very proud of how she came out.

Virse hails from an alternate universe where the GSR was never built and the Toa were created to attempt to repair Spherus Magna. However, they only made it worse, and in the great Shattering that followed, the Great Beings were lost. The survivors were forced to war for resources, Glatorian vs. Toa. After thousands of years passed and hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, they reached an unsteady peace. Virse, like many other Toa, used this time to specialize her element, shifting from Stone to Sand, before being taken to fight in the Bionifight Tournament. When the Bionifight Facility crash-landed on Saarella Kirottu, Virse was lost and presumed dead in an attempt to liberate the prisoners of the Cult of War.

Virse wields a Heat Gauntlet, a weak Great Being relic capable of creating great heat, in which she can forge her hardened glass blades. She wears the Mask of Elemental Transmutation, allowing her to change her body into sand.

Fire Dragon_Draig-teine

Transmutation, Mastery, Energy

"Draig-teine ​​brings vitality, enthusiasm, courage and a remarkable ability to overcome obstacles and find the energy necessary to face life's problems."

Drago di Fuoco_Draig-teine

Trasmutazione, Maestria, Energia

"Draig-teine porta vitalità, entusiasmo, coraggio e una notevole capacità di superare gli ostacoli e di trovare l'energia necessaria per affrontare i problemi della vita."

Testo tratto da L'oracolo dei Druidi. Lavorare con gli Animali Sacri della Tradizione Celtica. Text taken from The Oracle of the Druids. Working with the Sacred Animals of the Celtic Tradition.

www.edizionilpuntodincontro.it/libri/l-oracolo-dei-druidi...

Bing Image Creator

Indeed an honor to meet another fine-art photographer in the physical realm. A product of the transmutation of an online relationship which manifests into something real. I admired Liat work since I first viewed her photostream back into 2013. In fact, Liat work is one of the many Fine-art Flickr photographers who inspire me to create fine-art images when I began my journey.

I heard Liat stories about her connection to her images.Witnessing her relationship with her subjects (including myself). Acknowledging her different set of procedures. The best part though was just hanging out with her and Kendra.

Questioning my title? Whonnock is the name of the lake we explored. As for nymph, I like the concept of them.

Facebook Instagram

Nature and sunrise ❤️

Taken in Nagarahole..

வரிகள்: வைரமுத்து

“If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws. Now, once we observe that destruction is so useful to her that she absolutely cannot dispense with it from this moment onward the idea of annihilation which we attach to death ceases to be real what we call the end of the living animal is no longer a true finish, but a simple transformation, a transmutation of matter. According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another.” -- Marquis De Sade

... FOOD*

人生在於感悟，生活在於領悟

One of the many elderly seen visiting the Hungry Ghosts Festival. Most of them are spending time at the grounds chatting up with old pals, telling stories about the good old days.

=====

The Ghost Festival, also known as the Hungry Ghost Festival, or Yu Lan is a traditional Chinese festival and holiday celebrated by Chinese in many countries. In the Chinese calendar (a lunisolar calendar), the Ghost Festival is on the 15th night of the seventh month (14th in southern China).

In Chinese tradition, the fifteenth day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar is called Ghost Day and the seventh month in general is regarded as the Ghost Month (鬼月), in which ghosts and spirits, including those of the deceased ancestors, come out from the lower realm.

Distinct from both the Qingming Festival (in spring) and Chung Yeung Festival (in autumn) in which living descendants pay homage to their deceased ancestors, on Ghost Day, the deceased are believed to visit the living.

On the fifteenth day the realms of Heaven and Hell and the realm of the living are open and both Taoists and Buddhists would perform rituals to transmute and absolve the sufferings of the deceased. Intrinsic to the Ghost Month is ancestor worship, where traditionally the filial piety of descendants extends to their ancestors even after their deaths.

Activities during the month would include preparing ritualistic food offerings, burning incense, and burning joss paper, a papier-mâché form of material items such as clothes, gold and other fine goods for the visiting spirits of the ancestors

=====

Follow my rediscovery of the Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival here:

七月盂蘭 Mid Summer Ghost Story

For my past visits to the Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival here:

Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival

More Chinese Temples images here:

Caves & Temples

=====

TUNKASILA ONIWAN

Respiro del Grande Padre

Fede

"Come da te richiesto, parlerò.

Molto tempo è trascorso dalla tua richiesta, pertanto farò del mio meglio per cercare di farmi comprendere da te.

Non sono totalmente del tuo mondo.

Non uso spesso le parole.

Sono una dimensione di trasformazione, un veicolo di trasmutazione, un sentiero di liberazione e un canale di comunicazione.

Sono il respiro della creazione.

Potrai affidare a me la tua malattia e riceverne sollievo.

Grazie a me, potrai conoscere la tua forza e guarire da dentro.

potrai ricrearti.

E' questo il dono del tuo Creatore, di cui io sono il respiro."

TUNKASILA ONIWAN

Breath of the Great Father

Wedding ring

“As you requested, I will speak.

A lot of time has passed since your request, so I will do my best to try to make you understand me.

I'm not totally from your world.

I don't use words often.

They are a dimension of transformation, a vehicle of transmutation, a path of liberation and a channel of communication.

I am the breath of creation.

You will be able to entrust your illness to me and receive relief from it.

Thanks to me, you will be able to know your strength and heal from within.

you can recreate yourself.

This is the gift of your Creator, of which I am the breath."

www.edizionilpuntodincontro.it/libri/le-carte-lakota-dell...

Bing Image Creator

Das Weiss des Schnees verwandelt sich im Licht der Sonne scheinbar teilweise zu Silber.

The White of the snow transmutes in the light of the sun seemingly partial to Silver.

Were I to come back to this idea, using the Chinese night lights I found on Amazon to light a subject...this would be where I'd start. More than just a strange light for a normal subject, I'd push the composition more, try to get weirder with the framing, with what I'd have my subjects do.

So much of looking at the old photos, right now, is about seeing new avenues from old techniques. What roads did I neglect to follow, which avenues did I not investigate.

An easy way to end up regretful, but I see it as a map to new possibilities. It's not always easy, but it's important to keep yourself from sliding into negative feelings like regret. Actively push against that kind of thing. What happened happened, a positive way of transmuting that feeling is considering where it can take you, looking forward.

This photo doesn't make me think about what I should've done, but about what I Can do, next time I have the opportunity.

Click here to join my Facebook page!

Moving energies...

What happens when playing with 2 seconds exposure time and then trying things with GIMP, I really really like it!

Volpe_L'Astuzia

"La Volpe è intelligente, intuitiva, strategica, resiliente, indipendente, è veloce nel pensare e nell'agire, accoglie l'imprevisto con apertura, gioca con l'inaspettato, si rende invisibile a chi la intralcia e si fa beffe delle avversità. Ci dona una medicina molto preziosa che trasmuta la lamentela in forza creativa."

Fox_The Cunning

"The Fox is intelligent, intuitive, strategic, resilient, independent, is quick to think and act, welcomes the unexpected with openness, plays with the unexpected, makes herself invisible to those who get in her way and mocks adversity. It gives us a very precious medicine that transmutes complaint into creative force."

I testi citati sono di Federica Zizzari, tratti da "Animali Guida" ed. Vivida. The texts cited are by Federica Zizzari, taken from "Animali Guida" ed. Vivida.

Bing Image Creator

Real Name: Rex Mason

Gender: Male

Species: Human (mutated)

Occupation: Hero, Former Soldier

Height: 6'1

Weight: 200lbs (91kg)

Powers/Abilities:

- Elasticity

- Elemental Transmutation

- Molecular Reconstruction

- Flight

- Metamorphosis

- Enhanced Durability

- Bio-Fission

Weaknesses:

- Orb of Ra

Rex Mason, a soldier for hire, was contracted by Simon Stagg to find the Orb of Ra. When he found it, his cohort, Java, stole it and left Rex in the light of an ancient meteor. This meteor transformed Mason into Metamorpho, the Element Man.

I'd love to hear what you think.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes!

by TwoSided:

vest . Jeans vest Hwan !NEW @ mainshop!

by eXxEsS:

pants . Capri Pants @ mainshop!

by Nefekalum:

tattoo . Transmute - Gold (BoM and mats) @ mainshop!

by Lumae:

skin . Amesha, T7 (BoM) !NEW @ mainshop!

by The Stringer Mausoleum:

hair . Ruin - L.E. Waterfront

(color is not available, but style is! Check the mainshop for info!

hairbase . Partly Shaved (BoM)

by NANTRA:

pose & gun . Target Dress Challenge 2 @ The Liaison Collaborative

also shown:

eyes . Mortis: Bromine / by RUIN.

boots . Parker Boots / by JUSTICE

head . Nova / by LeLUTKA

chest . Lara Flat Chest Adapted / by Maitreya (fits most V-tech clothing!)

body . Lara / by Maitreya

backdrop . Callejon Branca (group gift) / by The Bearded Guy

✭ CIRCA ✭ Deadly Nightshade ✭ Dimma ✭ Dotty's Secret ✭ eXxEsS ✭✭ {Frick} ✭ Lovely Alien ✭ Lumae ✭ NANTRA ✭ Nefekalum ✭✭ QUOTH ✭ Soul ✭ TSM ✭ TwoSided ✭ We Love Role-Play ✭ Zibska ✭

Image taken in the virtual platform of Second Life (tm)

Glam Affair at We <3 RP also featuring Livid's Coven Gacha

Transmutation: The ability to move instantaneously from one location to another without physically occupying the space in between.

This is a close-up photo of a purple plastic vase featuring a cartoonish smiling face. The leaf patterns on the vase in the background suggest the location of the narrative might be a south seas island, or Florida. The purple face conveys all the manic energy of a serious personality disorder, driving at you like a big truck with a jihadist behind the wheel, or four years of a Trump presidency culminating in a right-wing insurrection, and a world-wide pandemic.

These collective traumatic shared cultural tragedies become part of the inner landscape of an individual's consciousness, where hopefully their toxicity can be transmuted by conscious love.

Magister of Transformations (Transmutations) - work in process...

photo by Alexey Geets

Auric Goldfinger’s cousin Tony (see “Goldfinger” by Ian Fleming) discovered that by fiddling with Chinese “Havana” microwave technology he could transmute objects into gold.

The trick was how to monetize Midas Tech without flooding the market with gold and lowering its value. Finally he hit upon a scheme. He transmuted a series of figures (from mannequins to toy action figures) and is now looking to crowdfund his new company Midas Tech Mannequin & Trophy Works. Care to invest?

=====

For more AI-generated images with micro stories by me and other members of the Neural Narrative Collective: neural-narrative.blogspot.com/

Photo | Stable Diffusion | Photoshop

a gift from nature in my garden ;-)

"We two--how long we were fool'd!

Now transmuted, we swiftly escape, as Nature escapes;

We are Nature--long have we been absent, but now we return;

...

We are two resplendent suns--we it is who balance ourselves, orbic

and stellar--we are as two comets;

...

We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again--we two

have;

We have voided all but freedom, and all but our own joy. "

These pieces are taken from Walt Whitman's larger poem entitled We Two-How Long We Were Fool'd

Once autumn and winter arrive, I find myself surprised everytime I find a flower. We stop taking them for granted as we do in the spring and summer. These roses although long past bloom still look like flowers. All this week I will show you some flowers in nature that aren't really flowers but make this cold season special.

There are many stories in native cultures about this illusive black bird. Shamans know the power of an unexpected piercing sound in altering consciousness. Ravens exercise this power, emitting a variety of sounds and can aid us in shifting our consciousness into various dimensional realms. This is one reason why the raven is known as a shape shifter with magical powers. Anyone with raven as a totem can expect continual changes and spiritual awakenings throughout their life.

Raven picks its students according to their accumulated wisdom. It flies into a persons life carrying the energy of magic and healing. If it decides to settle in and take up residence, it will stay as long as necessary to aid you in transmuting your karma then return you to the light. It will push, prod, and lead you into the discovery of your multidimensional self and reunite you with the secrets of the multidimensional universe. Those with this totem should remember to meet raven, not with fear, but rather with an appreciation for the teachings that it holds.

Below are the 3 stages it took to create the image. I also downloaded a Raven brush which I used in photoshop. I am playing around a lot, filling my time whilst still stuck in bed recovering. The finished picture reminds me of images out of a story book my Mum and Grandad use to read to me. Wish I could remember it's name.

Ja Rimpochevski (The Magister of Transmutation)

at Zuiderkerk, Amsterdam

The International exhibition “Art and Dolls” 8-9 april 2017

Z\W\A\R\T\24 is a long project of Z\W\A\R\T magazine in this building:

“The abandoned building KKN24 is located on Buitenplaats Koningsweg a former military base in Arnhem, The Netherlands.

The building was a sleeping-quarter for soldiers, 4 in one room. 39 Rooms in the whole building. The building is waiting to be demolished, meanwhile it transforms back to nature. In october 2014 artist BiOP got permission to use the building for site-specific artworks. He invites several artists to transmute the building and their artwork, 24hours a day. [ ]

During Code Rood (Code Red) the art and the building can be visited (every last saturday).”

Source: Transmute24 Facebookpage

www.facebook.com/transmute24

www.flickr.com/photos/transmute24/

follow the Z\W\A\R\T project on this blog, with many more photos: zwart24.tumblr.com/

Magister of Transformations (Transmutations) - work in process...

photo by Alexey Geets

z\w\a\r\t\24: a long term project of Z\W\A\R\T magazine in this building:

“The abandoned building KKN24 is located on Buitenplaats Koningsweg a former military base in Arnhem, The Netherlands.

The building was a sleeping-quarter for soldiers, 4 in one room. 39 Rooms in the whole building. The building is waiting to be demolished, meanwhile it transforms back to nature. In october 2014 artist BiOP got permission to use the building for site-specific artworks. He invites several artists to transmute the building and their artwork, 24hours a day. [ ]

During Code Rood ( Code Red) the art and the building can be visited (every last saturday).”

Source: Transmute24 Facebookpage

www.facebook.com/transmute24

www.flickr.com/photos/transmute24/

follow the Z\W\A\R\T project on this blog, with many more photos: zwart24.tumblr.com/

Caterpillars are very fast eaters; they spend their time eating or resting before they resume their eating again. Soon this caterpillar will transmute to a beautiful swallowtail butterfly.

Parte de la serie "transmutación". 2022

En la primera ("Un camino largo"), quiero transmitir un largo camino dedicado a la recolección de cargas emocionales, de responsabilidades; de sueños, creencias e ideas impuestas por nosotros mismos o por alguien más que en un punto de ese camino nos hacen sentir cansados y perdidos.

Lo que conlleva al dolor y pérdida de todo nuestro mundo, que genera el replanteamiento de vida y existencia. Representado en la fotografía "Mundo en llamas".

Luego, en "Catarsis", represento la dificultad y lucha que genera el proceso de fortalecimiento y redefinición del ser personal y de ese nuevo mundo indispensable para sobrevivir. Este proceso es largo pero por ahí leí una frase que decía “la libertad y el vuelo sólo son posibles después de la lucha por salir del capullo”…

En "Un nuevo comienzo" última foto de la serie, represento la finalización del proceso, o el nuevo comienzo donde se afronta y se continúa el camino fortalecidos, libres, ligeros y con una visión de uno mismo diferente.

A macro photo of a Brown Zircon Crystal from Madagascar.

Zircon Crystals and the age of Earth:

Zircon Crystals in a Nutshell - the simplified story of Zircon Crystals.

How tiny Zircon Crystals - Zirconium silicate (ZrSiO4) helped determine the age of Earth (at approximately 4.5 Billion years since the crust cooled) with Radiometric U-Pb (Uranium-Lead) dating.

Zircon Crystals trap Uranium Atoms in its crystal structure and naturally repels Lead. Once the crystal structure is formed, nothing is able to get out. Over time the isotopes of Uranium starts to transmutate into other elements in what is referred to as a decay chain. An Uranium Atom first transmutates to a Thorium Atom (which takes a few billion years). Thorium is far more unstable, and in less than a month it turns into Protactinium. Within a minute Protactinium atoms transmute again, and so on. At the end of the chain, the Uranium atoms finally decay into the stable element Lead (Pb), and will then remain Lead forever. As the decay rate and times of the transmutation are constant in the Universe, it is possible to calculate the age of the crystal with Radiometric dating. As Zircon Crystals are tough, it is the oldest geological time-capsules that survived in Earth's dynamic crust since it cooled. As nothing can get in or out of the Zircon Crystal structure, it is the most accurate way of geological dating. By comparing the dating of Zircon silicate crystals on Earth, from Moon samples and visiting Meteorites, Scientists have been able to calculate that Earth is 4.54 billion years old. The error margin is 50 million years, which is small considering the time-scale.

The spin-off from trying to date the Earth, was that the Scientist Clair Patterson discovered the high amount of toxic Lead in the environment, due to the use of Lead-based fuel, paint, etc. The body needs metals like Iron in the blood to transfer Oxygen through the body. The body assumes that Lead is a good metal, but Lead not only destroys cells, but blocks the signals of Neuroreceptors in the Brain (leading to madness). After a lifetime of persistence, Clair Patterson eventually won the case and the widespread use of Lead in everyday products were banned (which is why we now use unleaded fuel).

More interesting reading:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zircon

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_lead_dating

earthsky.org/earth/this-zircon-crystal-is-the-oldest-piec...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain

Thank you to my best friend Sumarie for giving me this time-capsule of Earth and our Solar System's geological history. It is a gift of significance from someone special, that knows what I value.

Photo usage and Copyright:

Medium-resolution photograph licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Terms (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). For High-resolution Royalty Free (RF) licensing, contact me via my site: Contact.

Martin

-

[Website] [Photography Showcase] [eBook] [Facebook]

[3D VFX & Mocap] [Science & Physics] [Python Coding]

Notes from an exhibit in Venice in 2019.

The wallpaper room created by Nadia Myre to welcome visitors consists of three walls and a heart-shaped sculpture woven over with beads. Guided by a soundscape evoking a mythical origin story of the universe beginning with a single sound, the visitor enters a built environment that mixes European and Native elements around which mutually shared stories were variably passed on by American peoples and Europeans each in their own way. Contextual elements such as ships, sections of maps, and other culturally relevant icons displayed on Myre’s design walls furnish the background for the centre piece of her installation: a human heart covered with Murano beads. Presented in much the same way as a man-made object in a Renaissance cabinet of curiosity this three-dimensional piece is emblematic of the relationship that Venice has indirectly had with indigenous North Americans over the centuries. Beads are here a marker or difference and identity simultaneously. Europeans conquered with Venice beads the hearts and imagination of Native peoples who eagerly welcomed this new trade good since the early contact phases. Historically appreciated for their brilliance and versatility, indigenous women created artworks of accomplished skill and beauty. Myre’s glass-covered heart continues in a long-standing artistic tradition that poignantly reminds us of the centrality of women in shaping history. If, as proven by commercial records and economic history, Venetians saw the North American bead trade as a lucrative enterprise, it is equally true that indigenous women’s desire for this merchandise was the incentive for Venetians to produce more, and as a consequence, make more profits. Equally treated as both a commodity and a colonial tool, beads have historically been the means by which European imperial powers established diplomacy and trade with Native North Americans. Used as the soft arm of colonisation, beads are therefore not just trade items, but agents of historical change in a cross-cultural conversation that Myre here invites us to peruse and ponder over.

Myre calls upon deep mythologies and re-examines European claims to a ‘discovery’ of the New World. For Myre, the exhibit brings to mind an ordinary sound--a sort of zero-vibration, an uncontained note or utterance--that recalls the many creation myths wherein the world was formed around an unending aural reverberation. Calling on this notion of an unfettered, ever-expanding energy as a point of origin, Nadia Myre’s works in this exhibition juxtapose Native creation stories with European contact history. These works investigate the role that European print media, especially maps, played in imposing a new, colonial origin story on North America’s Indigenous peoples; one that was rooted in a Eurocentric narrative of discovery and ignored existing modes of self-determination and historical record. Jumping off from her practice’s continual interrogation of transcultural mutation, these works focus on critically reversing the gaze of the othering eye through remixing and Indigenizing symbols of control and production of knowledge that formed a legacy of European nation states as the centre of the world.

Depicted in Myre’s damask-patterned wallpaper is a woman falling through a dark, vast expanse to begin human life on earth. To the Haudenosaunee, Sky Woman signifies a matrilineal line of descent which traces the people of Turtle Island to North America. Cradled, framed, or entrapped by images of European ships and mapping motifs, Sky Woman continues her fall to earth, enduring amidst the impending colonial origin narrative of discovery. Here, Myre translates a typical floral damask motif into colonial and indigenous signifiers, whose forms reflect, repeat and oscillate between evocations of growth, nature, violence and destruction, forming a doubled narrative of struggle, resilience, and layered points of origin. Based on the decorative double-sided textile from the Middle East, damask, as a popular luxury wall covering in Renaissance Italy, resonates with thematics of mirroring, cultural transmutation, and power. Through her incorporation of an ornamental circular motif used in Giacomo Gastaldi’s 1556 Map to delineate Hochelaga (Montreal), Myre uses the decorative and narrative nature of this wallpaper to abstract devices of circumscription and colonial naming of territory in a move to reject settler cartographic and claiming practices towards a consciousness of Indigenous knowledge of land and history. Aptly positioned as the nucleus of the installation is a terracotta sculpture of a human heart--standing in for the hungry heart of capitalism, greed, empires and colonies--covered in an Anishinaabe floral pattern made with Venetian trade beads. Used as ballast in slave/trade ships, beads were an important economic currency and exchanged for both goods and services as well as people. As a call to indigenization--a return to a focus on the environment and relational ways of knowing--the wounded heart, blanketed with beads, reminds us to centre with respect and love on all our relations. As a haunting story of the start of the world from a zero-point that precedes humanity, life, and form alike, the soundscape in Myre’s installation is a representation of the mythic original sonic vibration--rethinking the ways beginnings are identified, inscribed, written, and read. Points of origin are chosen; they do not indicate an end to nothingness, but only an inability to read what previously existed. Engaging creation stories are powerful tools of self-determination, cultural definition, and expression of value.

Today is my birthday so I want to show my personal project which I worked from time to time just for fun. This is work in process and will be developed much more.

70cm tall, Ladoll Premix mixed with Darwi Roc.

Magister of Transformations (Transmutations)

All photo by Alexey Geets