The Body and its Worlds — Inner or Outer

The Body and Its Worlds-Inner or Outer is an exploration of the layered consciousness, using
dual tones to bridge the visible world with the invisible depths of the subconscious. Here, the
“ultimate feminine” weaves our discarded selves back into the spirit, revealing that the
divinity we seek is not a distant goddess, but the very hand that stitches our identity together
from within.

While traditional iconography depicts Kali slaying the demon Mahishasura, here the battle is
internalised. Mahishasura represents the egoic mind and its anxieties. The ultimate feminine
form is not an “outer divinity” to be worshipped from afar, but the consciousness within us.

The act of stitching serves as an invocation of the breath, where the needle’s rhythmic
mending transforms the site of puncture into one of perpetual healing. It shifts our
perspective of labour into a quiet metamorphosis, weaving the discarded fragments of the self
into a living divinity.

Just as the body makes no distinction between the atmosphere it inhales and the vitality it
sustains, the act of mending the self is rendered as a constant, involuntary necessity of
existence. This process is articulated through the breath, a gift transported by a winged being
to signify the infusion of universal life into the particularity of the individual. Furthermore, it
explores the integration of the ancestral, wherein the feminine force incorporates “past
selves” into the present. By reframing those traditionally perceived as “dead” as latent entities
dwelling within an invisible realm, the narrative asserts that the past is never truly
extinguished. Instead, it remains a vital, woven component of our identity, continuously
transitioning from the ethereal back into the visible through the persistent labour of the soul.

It challenges the illusion of separation. Just as the phalanges of the fingers are distinct yet
inseparable from the hand, and the hand from the shoulder, we are attached to the “complete
body” of the universe.

At the top centre, we see a celebration of vitality, evocative of the primal energy found in
Matisse’s La Danse. Figures are locked in a rhythmic dance of celebration, encircling trees
that anchor the spirit to the earth. They exist beneath a red sky—a chromatic signifier of lie,
energy, fluidity, or blood. In this context, blood is a symbol of life in its most potent, flowing
state, mirroring the rivers and forests that populate the terrestrial landscape.

A feminine figure holds a conch. It serves as both an acoustic and spiritual marker; as the
figure blows the shell, it symbolises the release of the primordial breath that resides within
her. This breath resonates, resounds, connects the mountains, rivers, and flora into a whole,
suggesting that every element of the natural world is a manifestation of the same life force.
From the smallest flower to the distant stars, everything is stitched into a living universe that
breathes as one.

Seema Kohli, 2026