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. The landscapes we see, the things we believe in, and the ways we live are all different.

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

What do you see, living somewhere so different from me?
What do you feel?
What causes you pain?
What do you cherish?
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 Iraq, with a dragon behind her.

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

Their original titles were Dharmachakra Mudra — Iraq and Dharmachakra Mudra — Cuba.

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

What I wanted to portray was not a nation or its politics.

I wanted to portray a single human being living there.

I wanted to meet the individual who exists beyond broad labels such as nationality, religion, and culture, and to know something of the world she sees.

Because the work was born from this desire, the experience of having to remove the name of a country from its title left a lasting impression on me.

I have since returned to my original intention and restored the title as Dharmachakra Mudra — Iraq (Dragon).

Around 2019, I was also experimenting with different possibilities that would eventually contribute to the development of my original technique, Sacred Earth Painting.

Before I began working with soil, I painted directly on wooden supports, often allowing the natural grain of the wood to remain visible as part of the image. Even after I began building surfaces with soil, I was reluctant to completely conceal the beauty of the wood beneath it, and began exploring ways in which the qualities of both materials could coexist within a single work.

The woman’s clothing in this painting incorporates one of these experiments.

Rather than erasing the inherent beauty of the material, I wanted to allow it to remain present within the painting.

These explorations became part of the long process through which Sacred Earth Painting continued to evolve.