Protector of the World (2025)

Protector of the World is a dynamic screen-based work of software art based on the "hidden geometry" underlying Tara, the Tibetan Buddhist archetype of female power. The piece refracts the coloring of a very low-resolution image of a thangka painting through the underlying geometry that that for centuries have guided thangka painters' hands.

The refracted images emerge from a color field void, gradually become more complex, and then fall back into the void. The process is meant to convey the mental evolution of the meditator focusing on the image of an enlightenment being with imperfect faculties, seeing a blurry form that, according to my meditation teachers, is a perfectly fine support for the mind.

The imagery is also meant to convey the middle of the three "bodies" in Vajrayana Buddhism. The dharmakaya relates to the enlightened mind, and the nirmanakaya relates to an enlightened being's body. But the sambhogakaya is something in between: an energetic light body that represents creativity, speech, movement, and the many other ways our body connects to our mind, including through meditation.

This piece evolves in relation to the rotation of the earth via custom software running on a computer connected to the framed display. Its appearance is unique and non-repeating for any moment in time, produced through the relationship between two irrational numbers.

 About the Hidden Geometries Series

Protector of the World is part of the Hidden Geometries series, based on the grids that Himalayan painters have used for centuries. I learned these techniques over the past 24 years from master Tibetan and Nepalese thangka artists in Nepal and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Like other works in the series, this one is inspired by the long South Asian lineage of devotional art. Unlike much Western art, which often emphasizes cultural, aesthetic, or intellectual content, devotional art seeks to induce a direct inner experience. My work continue that tradition, aiming to evoke specific meditative states in the viewer.

The thangka paintings upon which these works are based are part of Tibetan Buddhism’s Vajrayana tradition. In this form of Buddhism, we understand both these archetypes of enlightenment and ourselves to be comprised of three “bodies”: our physical body, our mind, and an energetic body that bridges them. We experience this energetic body that translates mind to matter when we speak, dance, exercise, play music—and make art.

In tantric visualization practice, the archetype one imagines relates to this energetic body, embodying qualities like love, compassion, wisdom, and power. Its form arises in meditation from a field of infinite light and clarity, into which it eventually dissolves. I echo that process in each artwork’s evolution: emerging from a single color field into which it eventually dissolves.

Technically, each software art piece is executed as custom computer software written by the artist that is rendered in real time on a small computer mounted on the back of the display. It filters a low-resolution image of a traditional thangka painting through the sacred geometry of the particular archetype. These cycles are not video loops, but continuous algorithmic renderings translated through the “mind” of the computer.