::: Sanatana mood  along three journeys between 2003 and 2006

Does the outside carry the inside or does the inside create the outside?
~ a juxtaposition of inner and outer allusions to Sanatana ~

"The Eternal Way" (in Sanskrit Sanaatana Dharma), or the "Perennial Philosophy/ Harmony / Faith", is the one name that has represented Indic thought for many thousands of years. According to hinduism, it speaks of the idea that certain spiritual principles hold eternally true, transcending man-made constructs, representing a pure science of consciousness. But this consciousness is not merely that of the body or mind and intellect, but of a supramental soul-state that exists within and beyond our existence, the unsullied Self of all. Religion to the Hindu is the native search for the divine within the Self, the search to find the one truth that in actuality never was lost."

In the Buddhist teachings of Dhammapada, the Buddha has said: Nahi verena verani sammantidha kudacanam averena ca sammanti; esa dhammo sanantano which means "Hatred is never appeased through hatred in this world; through love only it ceases. This is an eternal law". Similar notions of an cosmic order, an universal wisdom are found in various religions and philosophical systems throughout history. The echo of sanatana mood in the Islamic/Persian Indo-Persian context would be the Sufi way. The concepts of zikr and fanaa refer to the reaching of a harmony between the soul and God.

Through this project I tried to look for and mirror a specific side of reality, something in the world inside and around us reflecting - if any - the allusions to Sanatana in it. Sanatana as a poetic obsession was the trigger and the vehicle of this double journey, inside the own consciousness, the inner self - the 'inside', and in the surrounding world, the daily life, the local people, their music, dance, customs and religious rituals - the 'outside'. I looked for the border between the inside and the outside journey, the form of this border, its thickness and substance, its covering layers. The outcomes of this journey so far are: Rite.Rhythm.India. - personal exhibition of photography (2006), Versuri in zbor ~ lacrimi pulbere de soare, poetry volume published by Editura Nico (2006), Within soul India (2004) - personal exhibition of photography and People of India (2003).

::: Rite in the vibrant rhythm of India                                       by Cora Fodor, art historian (october 2006)

It is what many have tried to discover in this mysterious territory of ancestral secrets. The temptation has also carried Iuliana Varodi on a ’initiation’ journey in a world in which the Eternal seems to be welcoming people at each step, living experiences that she reveals through a double act: the debut poetry book „Versuri in Zbor – Lacrimi pulbere de soare” and the exhibition of photography “Rite. Rhythm. India”, her third on India. (...) The immortalisation of India through her people, street images and its particularities was the impulse of returning to the origins, to a love of the near ones. We see a mix of the sacred and prosaic in a world of contrasts. Using a simple but not simplistic language, the author flows between the rational and the emotional, using the detail in an attempt to recreate the whole. While at a first glance the message appears to be easily read, the images gradually transpose us in a feeling of renunciation, of an effort of intimate fulfilment, of love. (...) scenes that create a general atmosphere beyond time, an image of a world in which time expands and flows according to different rules. With the accent laid on detail, its message comes back as a leit-motive (...) all scenes apparently without a connection. Still, they represent the experience of an introspective journey within the immediate surroundings and within ones own being (...). The artist has shared the fruits, the knowledge and experiences that she lived in India, that gave a profound sense and meaning to her journey. What incites in her work is not the representation, but the fact that as you look at these images, one feels triggered to go behind the immediate materiality of things, in other dimensions than the ones that surround us.