Dashavatara Evolution
Dashavatara refers to the ten principle avatars of the Hindu deity Vishnu, the god of preservation. Vishnu takes on these forms to restore dharma, an influential force of both cosmic and individual importance. The Dashavatara appear to coincidentally mirror the progression of the transition of life from water to land as postulated by Darwin's theory of evolution. This is due to each subsequent avatar having more complex anatomical features. Succinctly, evolution is descent with modification, where new organisms arise from previously existing organisms over time.
My body of work is a juxtaposition of these two concepts. I depict each avatar as a major transitional organism in the evolutionary lineage of man. The style of these works marry conventions found in Paleo-art with those found in Hindu devotional art. Iconography and mythologies attributed to each avatar are retained within these depictions. Through this series, I manifest a relationship between ideologies of Hinduism with the facts of scientific thought.
