LYNDI SALES

in transit

In my new body of work the subject of transcendence is explored from a personal perspective. Here the aeroplane journey acts as a metaphor for departures and arrivals. Flying becomes symbolic of a transitional state and a period of unpredictability. Original aviation life vests and life rafts make reference to life support, yet are deconstructed and thus suggest the vulnerability of a body in crisis. If flying is a metaphor for the period known as limbo or between worlds/destinations then the reference to safety suggests the vulnerability of bodies in this state. Life raft material is unusually similar to skin and here reference is made to the Renaissance depiction of flayed human skins and de-skinned bodies together representing the unveiling of the human countenance.
In this body of work I am preoccupied with the mutability of the human form and its ability to encompass different states: the spiritual and the physical. Resembling an exposed shell or an anatomical model, the interior of the figures are hollow, and a network of lines reveal the veins and arteries of a petrified circulation system.

A similar network of lines is employed in Shatter, consisting of 159 intricately cut SAA boarding passes, wherein an abstract pattern is derived from an image of cracks racing across a sheet of tempered glass shown the instant it is struck by a blunt metal plunger. This piece makes reference to the Helderberg plane crash of 1987, of personal significance to me, in which 159 people died. Shatter is also a contemplation on the parallels within macrocosms and microcosms. Resembling an eye as well as a mandala it represents the cosmos, the big bang, a vortex or a tunnel of light associated with a near death experience.
In this body of work the bardo period of transitional time is suggested through the use of objects suspended in space and the ‘tunnel of light’ and vortex are explored as portals between the known and the unknown. Made entirely of paper waste or life raft rubber these new works are fragile and susceptible to deterioration, and suggest a state of vulnerability and impermanence. This work seeks to nurture an awareness of fragility of life and transience, suggesting that life and death are transitory states and that there is no permanence in either.

Lyndi Sales


* The moment of death is significant as a transient period, a passing over. « Bardo » is a Tibetan word literally meaning "intermediate state" or "in-between state". It refers to the forty-nine day period after death and is described as the time, space or region that a spirit traverses between the moment of bodily death and spiritual settling. This period of bardo state is believed to be a time of vulnerability. (Fremantle 2001:25)