Here you go
You have the past, kindly supplied by WhyMe and it’s significance to women, labour and the feminin, who were generally low paid and exploited by industrialists. The building is now female owned with a powerful feminin energy. The site is owned by a good friend, a Jivamukti Yogi and run as a Jivamukti Yoga studio and teaching center.
Yoga means “to yoke” or “to unite”—to know oneself as one with all that is. Yoga practices are a means to overcome avidya, the ignorance that distorts one’s perception of oneself and others. Using asana as a method to attain Self-realization or enlightenment means exploring the true, practical, physical meaning of the term asana as “our relationship to the Earth”—that is, to other humans, animals, plants, things, the planet itself and all of manifestation.
Jivamukti Yoga sees activism in Earth Activism / Environmentalism, Political Activism.
“Whatever spiritual practice we are engaged in, it must address the environmental issues that our planet faces, or else our practice is irrelevant. The yogi strives to live in harmony with nature and to perceive all of life as imbued with consciousness. A yogi does not see him- or herself as living in the world, but rather sees the world as his or her own expanded self: the Earth does not belong to us; we belong to the Earth”
So yes, for me, the image we chose, the site it was placed, the energy of the place, the buildings history, the parkland surrounding it and SNIK’s interest in the Pre-Raphaelites, which inspire this series, one of whose core tenets was to reconnect deeply with nature, all came into play. I’m a big fan of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the movement, but perhaps it’s this Millais work that is better known, a movement he started in the late 1840’s. In some ways, this yearning for nature and beauty and the poetic, a response to mechanisation and vast industrialisation. So a factory setting is ideal.
And yes decorative, in the sense that it’s traditional and historcially “beautiful” in that Scandi midsummer way, but also not forgetting it’s cut with a knife and spraypainted on an old factory, so in a way also quite brutal.
You don’t have to know all of this to appreciate the work, I’m sure if I dug into it I’d fine the references to Caravaggio and chiaroscuro that Nik and Laura also referenced. I guess with art, as with most things, you only get out as much as you’re prepared to put in.
Hope that helps.
namaste 