The Gathering

Visiting the Pavilion in Downtown Dubai yesterday, I noticed that there were workers completing the installation of a new sculpture on the sidewalk.

After the installation was completed I went outside to photograph the figures from various angles, before going inside to continue what I was working on. 

As sunset approached the pink fingers stretching across the sky to embrace the Burj Khalifa drew me outside again. The chatting figures of the sculpture seemed happy in their new setting. 

While photographing them a gentleman and lady approached. Seeing me photograph the figures, she told me that the gentleman was the artist. I was privileged to meet architect and sculptor Xavier Corbero. 

A man with incredible vision, Corbero has built a dream home whose spaces are linked by underground passageways.

“His original vision of the property has since expanded to include a retreat for artists, studio spaces, workshops, a foundry, dozens of surreal chambers for residents and guests, sprawling galleries, living rooms, a myriad of hobbit nooks all connected by serpentine stairways filling over 10,000 square meters.”

Salvador Dali was Corbero’s first patron and Corbero is now considered to be Spain’s most important living sculptor. 

"You must leave things open so the person enjoys or looks," says Corbero. "I feel that when people look at a piece of art they become artists, they see what they see not what there is. What there is helps them to see something else and they feel better because they see something they were not seeing before seeing that. That's what I like to do.”

Standing next to his work, he seemed to effortlessly blend in with the figures, even unintentionally perhaps, replicating the pose of the figure he was standing next to.

 

In her piece on Corbero’s work in Beirut, Micheline Hazou, @mich1mich writes,

“Perhaps it’s the way the figures are positioned, in relation to the space and to one another that is as important as their bulk and mass…”

Corbero has said, "What is good is the scale, if you get the scale right, space stops being space to become mind. And this happens in a sculpture and it happens in architecture."

The sculpture, called The Gathering, invites one into its circle. The chatting figures capture for me the mix that is Dubai, a city where  many different nationalities and cultures meet.

The figures lean into each other with attention. They are accommodating of each other’s space and seem to acknowledge the other, while at the same time forming a unit. The energy flowing between them as they connect is almost palpable.

There is the sense that more personalities are about to join the gathering and engage in conversation. This excites me as non-judgmental listening and peaceful dialogue is so crucial in the world right now.

I immediately think too of this here2here space where we are all gathering now. What does it matter where we are physically situated in time and space. We can gather, be present here together, converse and share. We might all be different but we are more similar than we can imagine.

Whether gathering on sidewalks of cities, or sensing our interconnectedness in a large web made possible by technology, together we bear witness to Presence.

Mindfulness and Balance

On a visit to the Gate Village this morning, I took a wrong turn in the Dubai International Financial Centre and soon found myself outside, underneath what is called The Gate, looking up towards the Emirates Towers. With temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius in Dubai at the moment, outside is not exactly the ideal place to be, but as things turned out, what awaited me there made my day.

Looking around me I was confronted by an exhibition of tightrope sculptures suspended between the buildings.

The effect was mindblowing. I have still not figured out how the actual placement of the sculptures on these ropes was achieved, but to see these figures poised in midair with the skyscrapers of Dubai in the background simply stopped time. All the hustle and bustle taking place in the buildings nearby formed a background contrast to the stillness, precision, presence, and pointed focus captured in the tightrope walkers. 

Each figure portrays being totally in the moment as tightrope walkers have to be. If balance is to be maintained, the tightrope walker cannot afford to be planning an outing while precariously sensing the placement of the next footing. S/he has to be mindful of every aspect of the body and the rope. Should another walker be on the rope this mindfulness needs to extend even further. Each step has to be given the attention it requires as a harmony of movement and interaction takes place. 

And so it is with mindfulness. Awareness of the present moment, on purpose and non-judgmentally, anchors one with the correct amount of balance in the life situation one finds oneself in. It provides the pause before the next step and thereby the ability to respond instead of simply react.

The sculptures were in various poses (please further pictures in this gallery) and perhaps some of you can identify more readily with the tightrope walker who is also juggling.

A multitude of daily tasks often need to be juggled if sanity is to maintained, but there again mindfulness provides the balance and the often much needed pause to decide on the priorities of the moment.

Not only the tightrope walker and the juggler, but also the trapeze artist has much to teach us about balance and mindfulness in both our inner and outer lives.

In his book, “Wounded Prophet. A portrait of Henri J.M. Nouwen”, Michael Ford states that Henri saw the trapeze of the “The Flying Radleighs” as “a symbol of the concentrated meditative life which offered, in the same instant, both a sense of temporal freedom and a glimpse of eternity”.  

When we reflect on this statement, we see that the trapeze act also illustrates true freedom in time, a life filled with presence.  However, Nouwen saw that in some inexplicable way, in that moment of being fully present to the present, we are given a glimpse into a world beyond the immediate. These are the moments when something breaks through and we realize there is more to life than meets the eye. 

Mindfulness requires practice, both in times set aside specifically to foster the practice and as one goes about one’s day.

Sometimes, five minutes might be all you can manage as you attempt, for example, to follow your breath.  Thoughts might overwhelm you and sidetrack you to such an extent that you feel you have fallen off the task at hand. That is okay. That is how it is, while it is and while it lasts.

Next time you begin again and gradually the practice flows out to all aspects of your life.

One of my favorite juggling youtube videos features Thomas Arthur (@thomasart).

His performance is one of perfect balance and fluidity of movement. It is an embodiment, in my opinion, of being totally in the moment.