Gaby Cardenas
Molndal, Sweden
Molndal, Sweden
Bio: Gaby Cardenas is an international artist whose work straddles disparate worlds: Houston TX, where she currently lives as an expat; her birthplace of Ecuador, where her family lives; Sweden, where her new home is; and South Korea, which has influenced her spirit after living there for about nine years while earning a master’s degree.
Cardenas’s work spans mediums from painting and printmaking to installation, textiles, and artists’ books that address the human condition and the realms of spirituality.
The artist has exhibited in such venues as the Edward Hopper House of Art in New York City; Koehnline Museum, Chicago; Beany Museum of Canterbury, England; Hangaram Museum, Seoul, South Korea; and Lawndale Art Center, Houston.
Statement: For centuries Buddhist monks have used meditation to attain enlightenment, and more recently physicians have suggested meditation to help treat patients with certain disorders. My artists’ books are part of The Quiet Thread series, about the power of “mindfulness,” exploring the role arts can pay in raising awareness about the value of mindfulness in health treatments and how art can be used to heal and express experiences of illness. Meditation can also support social-change organizations and activists through “mindful activism” by helping them stay grounded when participating in peaceful resistance. The series started in 2014 as part of my own meditative practice while studying Zen philosophy in South Korea, and it continues today in Houston while I study Tai Chi as part of my interest in Eastern philosophies and religions. The series is a continuum. For me, the repetitive process of hand-writing the words “no mind” is like saying a mantra or prayer. It may also remind us of Zen monks who in the early seventeenth century drew Ensò circles with brush and ink as a form of meditation.
Cardenas’s work spans mediums from painting and printmaking to installation, textiles, and artists’ books that address the human condition and the realms of spirituality.
The artist has exhibited in such venues as the Edward Hopper House of Art in New York City; Koehnline Museum, Chicago; Beany Museum of Canterbury, England; Hangaram Museum, Seoul, South Korea; and Lawndale Art Center, Houston.
Statement: For centuries Buddhist monks have used meditation to attain enlightenment, and more recently physicians have suggested meditation to help treat patients with certain disorders. My artists’ books are part of The Quiet Thread series, about the power of “mindfulness,” exploring the role arts can pay in raising awareness about the value of mindfulness in health treatments and how art can be used to heal and express experiences of illness. Meditation can also support social-change organizations and activists through “mindful activism” by helping them stay grounded when participating in peaceful resistance. The series started in 2014 as part of my own meditative practice while studying Zen philosophy in South Korea, and it continues today in Houston while I study Tai Chi as part of my interest in Eastern philosophies and religions. The series is a continuum. For me, the repetitive process of hand-writing the words “no mind” is like saying a mantra or prayer. It may also remind us of Zen monks who in the early seventeenth century drew Ensò circles with brush and ink as a form of meditation.