Official Selection

Turkey 2020
Duration: 02:30
Directed by: Hüseyin Mert Erverdi
Animation: Hüseyin Mert Erverdi
Music: Hüseyin Mert Erverdi
Production/School: Hüseyin Mert Erverdi
Dialogue language: none
Subtitles language: none

The mandala is one of the most ancient and universal symbols known to humanity. The word “Mandala” literally means ‘circle, round form’ in Sanskrit, and it can be found everywhere from Paleolithic engravings to Shamanism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and so on. Mandala is an integrated structure organized around a unifying center, which serves several purposes including establishing a sacred space, as an aid to meditation, trance induction and focusing attention. It is a pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically and symbolically; a cosmic diagram that shows us our relation to the infinite, the world that extends beyond and within our minds and bodies. It also represents diversity within unity, the many, integrated into the one. Point and line evolves into a vast array of shapes, creating a pattern we see in natural forms, celestial objects, art, religion and so forth. Carl Jung, who was a prominent psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, recognized that the urge to make mandalas emerges especially during moments of intense personal growth. Their appearance indicates a profound re-balancing process is underway in the psyche. The true mandala is always an inner image, which is gradually built up through (active) imagination. The result of the process is a more complex and better integrated personality. Its symbolic nature can help one to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a sense of oneness with the absolute unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises. According to Jung, eye is the prototype for the mandala, the eye symbolizes seeing and light, and therefore consciousness itself. It is the gateway between the self and the cosmos as is the mandala. Mandala (2020) consists of 1000 uniquely drawn canvases, these canvases are individually drawn and edited in order to create a dance, a journey of various forms evolving. Starting from a relatively simple triangle form to square, to hexagon to many other polygons throughout the duration of the project and finally into the form of the circle. The sound is designed with the simplicity in mind, as a rhythmic companion to the dance of mandalas.

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