Cosmos – Voyages into the Mysteries of the Universal Blueprint, 2014, Dye sublimation print on HD aluminum panel, 24″ x 36″

Richard Bright: Can we begin by you saying something about your background?

Nila Onda: I come from a traditional photography and film background. I developed a passion for photography through my love for cinema and visual storytelling. I was also a precocious abstract artist. It’s my spontaneous mode of expression. I consciously set out to depict the fundamental forces in action and their interplay. I found freedom in abstraction.

My professional background is in documentary and news as a camera operator and in education, as a photography and film production lecturer.

RB: Have there been any particular influences to your art practice?

NO: My influences extend across a large spectrum of arts, sciences and life encounters with people and cultures – but music has had the most significant role. Among all art forms music is the most abstract and closely related to mathematics. John Coltrane elegantly illustrated this connection in the essay Music and Geometry and in a complex diagram known as Circle of Tones. Jazz has had an extraordinary impact on my early neuroplasticity. It shaped the way I think.

As I mentioned my photographic visual language originates from cinema but it expands beyond, blurring the line between photography and purely abstract art. Throughout my practice I have experimented with multiple and diverse genre aesthetics. The influence of film noir is particularly evident in my documentary, architectural and botanical work rendered in dramatic chiaroscuro and dominated by negative space. While some of my portraiture reinvents screen archetypes referencing the joie de vivre of the nouvelle vague mixed with a touch of surrealism. I attempt to capture lyrical moments, psychological action. 

In photography specifically I relate to the spontaneous approach of Cartier-Bresson. The synesthetic dance of Roy DeCarava’s visual music also strongly resonates with me.

RB: What is the underlying focus of your work?

NO: I think of creativity as a primal impulse, a driving force of life. Curiosity is the spark that ignites a relentless quest, a desire to explore ideas, processes, materials, aesthetics and technology.

The process originates from an encounter with mystery, a boundless space where I’m in touch with subtle energies and the intrinsic beauty of all things. It can be a contemplative moment, or visceral journey through the underbelly of the self in search of paths to transcendence, or an adventure of discovery through imaginary realms. It’s an intuitive, spontaneous and unpredictable flow. It’s a moment of tangible connection with the whole.

My thoughts are perfectly expressed by Jerry Uelsmann: “The role of the artist is not to resolve life’s mysteries, but to deepen them.”

Cosmos – Voyages into the Mysteries of the Universal Blueprint, 2014, Dye sublimation print on HD aluminum panel, 24″ x 36″

Cosmos – Voyages into the Mysteries of the Universal Blueprint, 2014, Dye sublimation print on HD aluminum panel, 24″ x 36″

RB: Can you say something about your work Cosmos – Voyages into the Mysteries of the Universal Blueprint?

NO: The project originates from a childhood fascination with the microscope. I describe it as a portal, an artistic catalyst, an intellectual trigger and a meditational tool. Conceptually, Cosmos mirrors ideas in expressed in Eastern philosophy and quantum physics:

Cosmos – Voyages into the Mysteries of the Universal Blueprint, 2014, Dye sublimation print on HD aluminum panel, 24″ x 36″

“Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems.” Niels Bohr

“Quantum theory has shown that particles are not isolated grains of matter, but are probability patterns, interconnections in an inseparable cosmic web…” Frifjof Capra

I envision a Universe vibrating in rhythmical motion while transforming and recreating itself, an interconnected system engaged in perpetual harmonic motion. A self aware, intrinsically creative Cosmo where the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts. The Universe is a dancer.

“As is the atom, so is the universe

As is the human body, so is the cosmic body

As is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind

As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm.”

The Upanishads

Cosmos – Voyages into the Mysteries of the Universal Blueprint, 2014, Dye sublimation print on HD aluminum panel, 24″ x 36″

Cosmos – Voyages into the Mysteries of the Universal Blueprint, 2014, Dye sublimation print on HD aluminum panel, 24″ x 36″

Cosmos – Voyages into the Mysteries of the Universal Blueprint, 2014, Dye sublimation print on HD aluminum panel, 24″ x 36″

RB: Your artworks create a vision of an interconnected system, between the microcosmic and macrocosmic, as well as between science and mysticism. Can you say more about your interest in quantum physics, Zen and Eastern philosophy?

NO: Ideas that resonate with us are a self-reflection. There is an essential elegance and poetic lyricism in Eastern philosophy that I strongly respond to. There is also playfulness, irreverence, humor and a profound sense of mystery. Above all I relate to its approach as system philosophy. This is where Eastern mysticism and quantum physics converge, in the search for a unified field theory. System thinking looks at connections, relationships, patterns, processes. Constant change is the primary attribute of the Tao. Yin and Yang are interdependent forces engaged in a generative process of interaction: the flux of life. My narratives follow the same principles, they are driven by the dynamic tension and interplay of opposite forces.

A key element that emerges in my practice is the principle of Yugen, a concept found in Zen aesthetics and philosophy that can be translated as mysterious profundity. I am also particularly intrigued by the monastic art practice of Splashed ink techniques and the idea of ‘aesthetics of accidents’. I already mentioned the encounter with mystery as part of my creative process. This same powerful experience is shared by artists, scientists and mystics in their pursuit of beauty, knowledge and enlightenment.

As Above So Below #1, 2017, 28″ x 29, Archival inkjet print on photo rag fine art paper

RB: Can you say something about your work As Above So Below, which you describe as an invitation to enter the void?

NO: The Void. A symbol of wholeness and emptiness, an absolute state on non-duality, a space of infinite potentiality. The beginning and ending of all things. Life evolves from nothingness and dissolves into nothingness.

‘Form is void and void is form’

The images in the series As Above So Below offer a free interpretation of the Zen circle combined with the visual poetry of mathematics. Fractal patterns emerge from a symbolic quantum vacuum – like life impulses coming into existence from nothingness. They are manifestations of a ‘thinking’ Universe powered by its own inner creative force.

As Above So Below #2, 2017, 21″ x 28″, Archival inkjet print on photo rag fine art paper

As Above So Below #3, 2017, 36″ x 40″, Archival inkjet print on photo rag fine art paper

RB: In Fritjof Capra’s and Pier Luigi Luisi’s book The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision (2014), they state that an “understanding of life begins with the understanding of patterns” (p.94). How does this statement resonate with you and your work?

NO: Patterns are repeated configurations that emerge from mapping relationships. From clusters of stars to the DNA double helix, patterns permeate everything. They are the primordial organizing principles of the Universe. Networks embedded within networks forming the web of life.

Geometric configurations have been represented in art across cultures to express abstract concepts and mystical ideas like infinity, the cyclical nature of life, transformation and enlightenment. In music they are manifested in rhythm, harmonies, scales, tones and intervals. They are also recurring elements in my practice. My ongoing project Abstract Anatomies investigates modes of patterns interaction.

Abstract Anatomies 06, Detail, 2018

The symbolic language of patterns seems to reveal the inner workings of life. It triggers an instinctive reaction of connection with the whole and induces a strong aesthetic response, an experience of beauty. “Being a language, mathematics may be used not only to inform but also, among other things, to seduce.” Benoit Mandelbrot

RB: What projects are you currently working on or have coming up in the future?

NO: Luminous Gardens Is a long term ongoing project I began in 2018.

I worked from different locations in North America and the Caribbean utilizing local flora and marine elements. I created small scale underwater environments entirely from natural components. They are photographed in sun light against hand painted backgrounds. The process is simple and organic. Everything is achieved in camera, nothing has been altered in post-production. The result is a series of otherworldly, unreal photographs that offer a vision of the natural world as a realm of enchantment. They are transient moments of unfolding beauty, meditations on the nature of impermanence. Only consciously acknowledging impermanence and our own mortality we will experience life’s depth and intensity to the fullest.

Luminous Gardens, 2020

Luminous Gardens, 2020

Luminous Gardens, 2020

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http://nilaonda.com/

All images copyright and courtesy of Nila Onda

Art, Creativity, Science, Technology