Samina Virani
UK, France, Spain
Samina is the founder and Artistic Director of the rabbit hole. A performative researcher and conceptual artist, the essence of her work is rooted in deconstruction and an esoteric inquiry about inner journeys and transformations.
She writes poetry and texts, repurposed into film scripts, voice overs and integrated in her mirrored installations. Influenced by Sufism, Kabbalah, and sacred geometry, she works with reflective surfaces, geometric configurations, building large kaleidoscopes and other objects that illuminate trajectories of light and reflections. Here the invisible comes to life in her work, a magical space where she contemplates the eternal looking glass “the secret gaze.”
Referring to her deconstructed world as “wonderland;” she attempts to diffuse the labyrinths around us. By dissolving layer after layer, she seeks to extract glimpses of a mystical inner world.
Samina earned her BSC in Culture and Politics at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, specializing in cultural anthropology, post modern philosophy and semiotics. She studied workshops at Teatro de los Sentidos in Barcelona where she learned the distillation of the senses, and the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts in London where she learned the constructions of the golden ratio. In 2017, she was awarded a scholarship semester at the MFA program at Bezalel Academy of Art, Jerusalem.
She has worked and lived in New York, Washington DC, London, Barcelona, Berlin, Tel Aviv and Istanbul.
Samina is the creator of “the art of remembering” and scripted the dramaturgy and poetic journey for the artists’ experience.
https://www.saminavirani.com (under construction)
Response to the question:
“poetics of oneness’
it began with an invitation
to the labyrinth of mirrors,
each entering the path from a different viewpoint.
where are you located?
who is in?
in the labyrinth of mirrors,
i wondered and pondered,
is there a passage of time?
is there a passage of space?
what are the rights of passage exactly?
then the passage revealed itself,
on a stormy full moon night.
an electric subliminal current
entered through each one of us,
catalysed by a mysterious fish incident.
through the spheres of 10 interconnected crystals,
tracing a path of circular ruins,
a chandelier of light is formed,
the prism of oneness is created.
finding and identifying refractions of one in the other.
a way of seeing and being seen.
is it all the same? is it all different?
the symbols that become our searches
the searches that become our symbols.
it is true there was “a flint in our eyes” as we gathered at the finale,
the wandering gazes that existed between performative phases,
had diffused into collective threads of illumination,
a harmonious resonance.
10 viewpoints,
gazing as one.
gazing through oneness; oneness through gazing,
there was a recognition of sameness.
for me, remembering was found within the existence of us.
the connection of memory as a memory to connection.
Installation concept:: In the beginning, there is a point, then a circle. Then a trajectory of lines that form rhythmic patterns. In this case, the symphonic rules of the Fibonacci Sequence - an interweaving within itself - create a perfectly formed frame of 10 crystal stars positioned together in the shape of a circle. Through this pattern recognition of interconnected formations, the hidden mysteries of the golden ratio reveal themselves.
Only through illumination can one see the connecting rays of light that exist in the middle, alighting points through and within the others. Unveiling the ethereal mist of the collective encounter, a golden echo of light passes through the stars transpiring as a hologram of unwritten subliminal codes that constitute the '“poetics of oneness.”
detail: mirrored surface
Installation dimensions:
outer circumference: 10m
1 side x star panel: 15cm x 15 cm
materials: plexi glass see through mirrored sheets 2-3 mm thickness
The travelers:
Within Naples, a moving mosaic of forces, I became fascinated with the rituals and symbols overtly and covertly infusing through me, like electricity flowing through arteries of remembering.
I was interested in the threads.
Within the journey, as pilgrims on the edge of perception, there were rules scripted to create freedom. The artists divulging in their own threads, then a moment of a collective amalgamation of the threads that created a new structure entirely.
The labyrinth of mirrors revealing itself in the end as a collective embodiment of oneness.
“Remembrance is being initiated into the mysteries. Remembrance makes people desire the journey; it makes them into travelers.” – Rumi