17 September 2009
Taking the first step along the Path to Paradise
Arfa Kalok works on her ephemeral art in Bowen Street.
Students and staff lend a hand to create the beautiful works.
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RMIT University students gathered on the City campus to help create stunning “art of the moment” works using brightly coloured rice, in a project designed to symbolise the impermanence of life.
Led by Master of Public Art student Arfa Kalok, the Path to Paradise project created a series of ephemeral arts leading from Bowen Street to the RMIT Spiritual Centre.
The work was the first in a series of similar events creating ephemeral arts influenced by the meditation tradition of Tibetan sand art and the Indian Rangoli, a sense of welcome, during the Diwali festival.
Ms Kalok said the idea of the Path to Paradise was to help to promote a sense of place of the Spritual Centre and foster a sense of belonging to the University.
“Through this ‘placemaking’ project, I wanted to encourage a sense of community and a sense of pride towards the University by recalling the Spiritual Centre’s sense of place, where people can get to know each other and interact no matter what their religions or cultural backgrounds are,” she said.
The “Path to Paradise” will continue at Orientation in February, followed by Spiritual Centre colloquia in March, April and May.
Ms Kalok said a different ephemeral arts design would be used for each event.
“This first featured sacred flowers from all religions and plants that recall the genus loci of the Spiritual Centre, which can be seen as a stress-free, quiet, out-of-way place on the RMIT campus where students can gather and do their own activities that relate to academic purposes,” she said.
“The biggest is the daphne plant, which grows in the centre of the Spiritual Centre courtyard.
“It has a strong aromatic smell that evokes the sense of place of the enclosed garden.”
Creating the ephemeral arts would take one person between two and four hours, but with the RMIT community working as a team, the artworks were completed much faster.
The ephemeral art pieces featured sacred flowers.
Dr Kitty Vivekananda from Student Services and Dr Ruwan Palapathwala from RMIT Chaplaincy.
The completed Path to Paradise project.
