This work is part of my I Wanna See You series, in which I portray women from different parts of the world making the same Dharmachakra Mudra.

In Buddhism, the Dharmachakra Mudra is a hand gesture symbolizing the Buddha teaching the Dharma—“turning the Wheel of Dharma.”

In this gesture, I have come to see an image of people exchanging words and seeking to understand one another’s worlds.

We are born in different countries, speak different languages, and grow up within different religions, cultures, and environments.

And yet, we belong to the same human species, living at the same time on the same planet.

What kind of world do you see, living somewhere so different from me?
I want to meet you. I want to talk with you.

It was from this desire that the I Wanna See You series began.

In this work, I portrayed a woman from Cuba, with a white phoenix behind her.

I created the work in June 2019 as a counterpart to Dharmachakra Mudra — Iraq (Dragon), and the two works were presented together at Art Shopping at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris in October of that year.

The two women live in different countries and have grown up within different cultures.

I did not paint them in order to compare them.

By placing two women from distant parts of the world side by side, making the same Dharmachakra Mudra, I hoped that beyond the differences of nationality, culture, and religion, the viewer might encounter each of them simply as an individual human being living her own life.

The works were originally titled Dharmachakra Mudra — Iraq and Dharmachakra Mudra — Cuba. However, when they were presented in Paris, I was asked, against the backdrop of the international situation at the time, not to use “Iraq” in the title. They were therefore exhibited as Dharmachakra Mudra — Dragon and Dharmachakra Mudra — Phoenix.

I have since returned to my original intention, and this work is now titled Dharmachakra Mudra — Cuba (Phoenix).

The period in which I created this work was also a time when I was exploring many different possibilities for Sacred Earth Painting.

Even before I began working with soil, I often painted in ways that allowed the natural grain of the wooden support to remain visible. When I later began incorporating soil into my work, I still wanted to preserve the beauty of the wood rather than completely covering it.

In this work, I incorporated the natural grain of the wood into parts of the woman’s body itself.

Rather than covering the material entirely through the act of painting, I wanted to work with what was already there and allow it to remain part of the image.

These experiments became an important part of the process through which Sacred Earth Painting continued to develop.