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As I walked in, my heart sank slightly. The request for models had called for women of all sizes, shapes, and ages. As I stood there making polite small talk, I felt older and lumpier than those around me. The male photographer bustled about, feathers and sequins in hand, and I started to doubt the confidence that had brought me to Natalia's studio.
Then I took a good look at the woman on the couch and how the artist Natalia with a liquid eyeliner had created a moving, breathing, smiling, dancing canvas on the woman’s body.
Mandalas, blossoming lotus flowers and chakra symbols were painted directly onto the woman’s skin from below her navel to her throat. The work was so beautiful that i began to feel better.
Now or never, I said to myself, as I took off my top and laid down on the chaise longue and Natalia’s eyeliner danced over my skin. Here was a chance to see myself artistically decorated and feel better about myself.
Even as a yogi, I am aware of my lines, cellulite and to be honest, I’m not as lithe or as body perfect as I would like to be. I admit that I feel like my age is creeping up on me.
A Change
But as I stared down at the chakra symbols painted on my body by Natalia I began to think differently.
First of all I remembered why I do yoga. It’s to feel the flow of subtle energy within me, to feel a part of something bigger than myself, and not to look good in a pair of jeans. And secondly, I realized how much I judge myself and beyond that judgement, I started to see beauty.
As Natalia says, beyond the shapes, the sizes, the skin colour; beyond the physical form, energetically we are all the same. And this is the theme of her latest art project On The Annamaya – A Celebration Of The Divine Feminine.
“This project has been about bringing women together. The photo shoot is a piece of art in itself. The whole process is art. Women arrive for the shoot and they come with their insecurities, their stories, judgments and jealousies, but I have found that the whole process is very healing. Throughout the day the conversations change, the comfort level changes, I see women blossoming. From the time I draw on the women and they get photographed, some magic happens. The group project I recently did was such a beautiful testament to women – going beyond the stories and judgments, the shyness and the lumps and bumps, and becoming embracing of each other, embracing of each other as sisters.”
Through the media we are fed certain images and we buy into a lot of negative stereotypes about women and this often fuels our own judgments of ourselves and other women. We are always comparing and contrasting, judging not only our bodies, but our life’s progress and our processes against every other woman that we meet.
Visual Medicine
For the individual,
On The Annamaya is visual medicine. You start to honour your body more as you see this beautiful artwork start to snake up your body. It’s a reminder of the beauty within. It’s a reminder to drop the mind.
Natalia focuses on the energy of the individual – where they want to feel empowered and where they hold themselves back. The artwork - the chakra drawings and the mandalas - blossom to enhance the energy of a particular chakra.
“I worked with one mother and baby – she was a single mother and I painted a blooming lotus at the anahata (heart) chakra and lots of downward facing triangles to represent the Divine Feminine. I try to draw out symbols to give a strong intention for the Self.”
Natalia’s art ‘career’ started out with self portraits, and then as she discovered herself through yoga, dance and movement her work became more experiential.
Yoga And India Influence
“My art has very much been influenced by my yoga practice. I follow a strong Hatha yoga practice, but my yoga is not just the physical, I am really affected by the philosophy and if I’m doing a practice, I really need to know why I am doing it. As I was learning the asana, the physical side, I started speaking to yogis in India and read a lot of the books from the Bihar School of Yoga. I wanted to conceptually understand the flow of prana, and the essence of kundalini and the chakras. I wanted to express these flows of energy within myself. I have a series of self portraits of what I experienced in yoga and yoga nidra (relaxation).”
“The aesthetic of India plays a big part in my art. My art is infused with the symbolic stylization of India – lotuses, chakras, Indian philosophy. My art is my response to these symbols within myself. My art is really a journey of self discovery. I started to simply explore myself and because I am a woman, I started to explore the Divine Feminine, the sensual, the maternal, the Crone – all of the goddess archetypes. I was my first subject matter.”
The concept of darkness and light appears through Natalia’s work, and naturally the play between the light and dark is a big part of spirituality, religion and culture in the East, especially in India and Bali.
“I was at a festival recently in Bali which was to honour the dark spirits. The whole island was caught up in it and it was impossible not to feel this vibration. Embracing the shadow, honouring the dark as well as the light. My new works are showing a face split down the middle, one dark, one light – honouring the whole truth.”
Natalia’s work reminds us to honour the light and dark within ourselves, the outer mask and the inner beauty, the masculine and feminine, the yin and yang. For me, personally, the photo shoot was a reminder to honour myself in the whole, light and dark, lumpy bits and all. It was a reminder to go beyond judgment.
www.natalianatuka.com