Christine Spinder

She paints wall banners and shawls with symbols found around the world in shamanic and folk art.

Researching her own Slavic culture’s ritual symbolism, Christine found patterns in ancient tattoo, weaving, carving and embroidery that appear around the globe, in Ayurvedic, Mayan, Incan, East African, Chinese, Icelandic and Turtle Island Plains Indigenous art, all with the same meanings: the coming together of spirit and matter and its emerging here and now creativity, learning, belonging, collective connection, the elements, ritual, birth, awareness, and death.

In their countries of origin, including the lands of the Slavs, the symbols appear on house posts, doors and gateways, exterior walls, bowls, clothing, ritual objects and temples. They are painted on neolithic caves. At early installations in private gatherings and social transformation workshops, viewers of the banners repeatedly reported deeply resonant and positive somatic responses to the art. Perhaps we evolved with them.

Colours have spoken to Christine since childhood, when the symbols appeared in her dreams. Her artistic and social inquiry explores the somatic and collective impact of symbols on identity, collective consciousness and agency; re-occupying public space with joyful, collective and transformative meaning-making; and the design and facilitation of experiential settings for engagement in collective story creation.

The current series are elements of an installation in production.