HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS

#172 :: Silicone Kali

Synthetic id, a tiny iconic totem of the claimer of heads and taster of the forbidden, this squishy finger puppet seems a blasphemous joke in the face of what would surely be the most vengeful wrath of the Indian goddess of destruction, Kali.

She is full-breasted; her motherhood is a ceaseless creation. Her disheveled hair forms a curtain of illusion, the fabric of space - time which organizes matter out of the chaotic sea of quantum-foam. Her garland of fifty human heads, each representing one of the fifty letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, symbolizes the repository of knowledge and wisdom. She wears a girdle of severed human hands- hands that are the principal instruments of work and so signify the action of karma. Thus the binding effects of this karma have been overcome, severed, as it were, by devotion to Kali. She has blessed the devotee by cutting him free from the cycle of karma. Her white teeth are symbolic of purity (Sans. Sattva), and her lolling tongue which is red dramatically depicts the fact that she consumes all things and denotes the act of tasting or enjoying what society regards as forbidden, i.e. her indiscriminate enjoyment of all the world's "flavors".

But Western culture always does this - reduces fearsome symbolism and religious beliefs to the level of trivialized kitsch. Why, then, when this silly Kali offends me, does her little rubber comrade inspire?

Posted by mack reed at July 30, 2004 04:36 PM | TrackBack