ART OF FORGIVENESS
neon light installation | size: 125x110cm | edition: 3 | year: 2018
“Art of Forgiveness” is a neon light installation consisting of four expressions coming from Ho’oponopono, very powerful ancient Hawaiian practice of reconciliation, forgiveness and ennobling relations, both on a social and a personal level. The name translates directly from Hawaiian as: “to put in order or shape, correct, revise, adjust, amend, regulate, arrange, rectify, make orderly or neat”. Ho’oponopono assumes that every problem of ours starts with our single thought. That’s why the change we want to see in the world should start from ourselves. This healing practice pinpoints the source of our problems and gives us an extremely simple, yet breathtakingly strong solution.
Mantra:
I’M SORRY - take responsibility for your thoughts and actions, instead of projecting it on others.
FORGIVE ME - give up your ego and ask those whom you have wronged to forgive you.
THANK YOU - show gratefulness for what you’ve got, and to those from whom you got it.
I LOVE YOU - express love towards your partner, family, friends, humankind in general, and all forms of nature.
My plan is to express this “mantra installation” in many languages and show it in many countries, to reach as many people as possible, to activate in them the process of symbolic healing.
The very first language version of the ART OF FORGIVENESS was made in Polish, for a group exhibition coinciding with the 100th anniversary of Poland gaining independence, and was presented in the prestigious BWA Warszawa gallery (11.11.2018-5.01.2019) in a large front window, facing one of the busiest streets of Warsaw.
This work is my response to the escalation of hate speech caused by economic crisis, political frictions, and social polarization. Statistics are terrifying. In Poland, only between 2013-2016 the number of crimes motivated by hatred doubled. History gave us many hard and painful lessons on how the inability to forgive can destroy us. Still many people do not realise that the problem is not in the outside world, but within each one of us.
Next coming language versions are: English, American&Spanish, Hebrew&Arabic, Hebrew&Polish, German (coinciding with the 30th anniversary of fall of the Berlin Wall in 2019), Polish&Russian, Spanish&Catalan, Polish&German, French&Arabic... I’m also open for commissions. The neon light installation can be hung in the window or put on the wall.