Art, Enlightenment and Happiness

CEBU, Philippines - "Spiritual Magma" - the featured art exhibit of Qube Gallery for the first half of November - presents a string of artpieces that come across as far removed from a Cebuano viewer's periphery of experience. Yet the show's overall tone is as familiar as the fixtures that define the ideals of "home."

Consisting of more than 25 mixed-media paintings by artist Aditi Ahuja, the show draws stimulus from the classic, the avant-garde and the rifts that lie in between, enthusing a veil of oneness that transliterates 'being' with 'happiness' - a quality that's evocative of the many ways art gets to cut across cultures, cross borders and unite generations.

Expansive in the way she focuses on the subjects of euphoria, beauty, inspiration and enlightenment, Ahuja works with various mediums (gold, being one of them) and creative techniques in this collection.

From expressionist paintings to pieces that are molded by the timeless conventions of representational compositions, it's the artist's utilization of the circle as an aesthetic element that stands out in this show - a utilization that apparently alludes to the transcendent power of the mandala and the mantra as aids for meditative inductions.

The circles that can be discerned in this exhibit guides viewers through spaces that can be called one's own, spaces where different facets of beauty - nature, culture, history and being - get their due.

Though finding oneself is not exactly the underlined premise of the exhibit, the virtue in finding happiness within oneself is. It is in line with Sanskrit principle that the human person is the drawing pool of his own spiritual magmas; that he is the source of our own happiness.

"Spiritual magma" opened on October 22 and runs until November 14.