URBAN MANDALA by Györgyi Kapala - exhibition opening
An oil slick on wet asphalt — the photograph was taken after the rain and became the basis for the embroidered tapestry titled URBAN MANDALA. I was captivated by the beauty of the phenomenon! Naturally, other thoughts also arose — sustainable development, and the untenable state stemming from hyper-consumption pushed to its limits.
The pace of scientific discoveries and the flow of information have left behind the outdated technological devices, along with their mechanical and chemical waste.
Schedule
Györgyi Kapala: URBAN MANDALA
The Impermanence of Phenomena — Information Carriers
The exhibition will be opened by Dr. Andrea Bordács, aesthetician and head of the Department of Visual Arts at ELTE BDPK.
An oil slick on wet asphalt — the photograph was taken after the rain and became the basis for the embroidered tapestry titled URBAN MANDALA. I was captivated by the beauty of the phenomenon! Naturally, other thoughts also arose — sustainable development, and the untenable state stemming from hyper-consumption pushed to its limits.
The pace of scientific discoveries and the flow of information have left behind the outdated technological devices, along with their mechanical and chemical waste.
Information has shed its former carriers, changing attire: first adopting the floppy disk, then the CD, followed by the DVD — only to disappear into servers and clouds...
The unburied corpses of technological progress line the road leading toward the future.
In the midst of this senseless rush, I paused — or more precisely, I sat down to embroider, using a needle as a tool to stop time and return it to my immediate surroundings in the form of meditative content. I picked up the thread.
Embroidery itself is a meditative state — its monotony mentally liberates the consciousness entangled and bound by thoughts.
The quilted material, reminiscent of patchwork and displaying colorful data storage disks (floppies), domesticates the now-functionless technological object — or rather its image — by incorporating it into a home decor function: transforming it into a wall hanging.
I depict the rainbow-hued streak of gasoline on a thangka, a vertical Tibetan silk banner.
The rainbow’s colors are caused by the dispersion of white light. In Bön Buddhism, white is the color of space — the fifth element — where all beings take form. It is within this space that the statement unfolds and takes physical shape — literally embodied (stitched with tapestry-like, tattoo-like embroidery) — through the opening line of the Mahāparinirvāṇa:
“All phenomena are impermanent.”
The carrier of information — a female body printed on construction netting — underscores the statement that all is impermanent. Due to its translucent nature, it becomes see-through under light,
thus revealing only the embroidered script — appearing like shadows, as memento mori on the wall.
Györgyi Kapala
exhibition: 29.05.2025 - 20.06.2025