ASWATTHA

There is a fig tree
In ancient story,
The giant Aswattha
The everlasting,
Rooted in heaven,
Its branches earthward:
Each of its leaves
Is a song of the Vedas,
And he who knows it
knows all the Vedas.
Downward and upward
Its branches bending
Are fed by the gunas,
The buds it puts forth
Are the things of the senses,
Roots it has also
Reaching downward
Into this world,
The roots of man’s actions.
What its form is,
Its end and beginning,
Its very nature,
Can never be known here.

From The Song of God: Bhagavad-Gita translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood

Aswattha is inspired by a verse in the Bhagavad Gita, which refers to the inverted tree as a cosmic tree with its roots in the sky and its branches below. This work reflects the central themes of much of Nidhi Jalan’s work, which is based on interwoven cultures, the ease or unease of the transplant, and the fertile ground that makes for the birth of unusual and fantastical life forms. The piece is inspired also in part by Hieronymus Bosch, whose work she is greatly influenced by, specially Bosch’s view of the world, his manner of composing, and his visual language that is teeming with contrasts – virtue versus vice, the exalted alongside the obscene, the positive coexisting with the negative.

NIDHI JALAN has an MFA from Hunter College, New York, and trained in ceramics with Ray Meeker and Michel Hutin in India. She was nominated as an emerging artist at the NCECA 2010 ceramics conference. Nidhi has been featured in Susan Peterson’s book Working with Clay. She received the Zankel Gift Award at Hunter College and was awarded a prize at the 55th edition of the International Competition of Ceramic Art, Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche (Italy). She has completed residencies at the Skowhegan (Maine), Henry Street (New York), Hunter College (New York) and at the European Ceramic Work Center (Holland).

nidhijalan.com