Mother Earth Dark Mother

December 1, 2023-January 6, 2024

In Mother Earth Dark Mother, Manik Raj Nakra harnesses spiritual iconography and transcendental motifs to create fictional worlds rooted in a mythology of his own making. Inspired by the mythologies of Kali Ma, the Hindu Goddess of death, time, and change, and moths seen as “angels of death” by ancient cultures all over the world, the artist has combined the two into what he calls “Kali Moths." The Kali Moths explore ritual, lust, mortality, and ceremony.

Moth iconography has been found on old-world artifacts and ancient ruins to represent transformation and death. They are believed to travel between both dimensions, the living and the spirit world. In some folklore, moths meant ancestral spirits were present. The Aztecs called them mariposa de la muerte, for it was believed that when there is a sickness in a house and a moth enters, the sick person dies. Moths also symbolize death in Egyptian mythology as they are attracted to light, which is an invitation from the dead. In Asian cultures, it is believed witches may take the form of moths.

*Moonlight, Desire, a Jackal, Sea Serpents, and Me* detail

The Goddess, Kali Ma, is historically depicted with blue or black skin as the darkness from which the universe is born. Other characteristics include fangs, a long tongue, 4 arms, and a garland of human heads. In Hindu Mythology, Kali is also often summoned as personified wrath and embodied fury. In her most famous story, she is called upon to defeat a demon who multiplies every time a drop of its blood hits the ground. She uses her sword to sever the demon’s head and unfurls her long tongue to catch any spilled blood. She is revered and worshipped as a Goddess of both creation and destruction. In Western pop culture, Kali Ma is most famously depicted as the leader of the cannibalistic cult in the film “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”.

The collage technique utilized in these artworks on handmade paper draws upon Western artistic traditions of early xeroxed cut & paste style punk flyers and zines and the South Asian history of woodblock printing as a way to reflect the artist's own experience of being a first-generation Indian American.

Alongside the Kali Moths is a wall-sized tapestry, “Moonlight, Desire, a Jackal, Sea Serpents, and Me” made of patch-worked Japanese mulberry paper. This tapestry is meant to function as world-building for the Kali Moths. A spiritual worldscape for our moth-winged figures interrupted by spiritual iconography reminding us of our relationship to nature, mortality, history, and memory.