Stupads are small, handheld objects resembling flower buds, ancient stupas, and reliquary. They are figurative, though entirely of digital origin. Meant to be companions, filling a ritualistic spiritual role in the daily process of one’s life. Their bulbous forms appear almost ready to open, to reveal, yet they also securely guard a secret content like vessels. They exist, mystically, at the intersection of the algorithmic and the other-than-logical.
Each Stupad has a vertical hollow shaft running through its core. This is a portal, a passageway, a breath-channel. It is a reminder of both emptiness and fullness, and the relationship of those two, which makes them forever intertwined.
The audio guide, which gathers seventeen rituals with Stupads for daily practice, is available upon request. Stupad rituals are imagined, yet inadvertently re-synthetized from practices both ancient and futuristic, real and fictitious. Rituals accompany major life events and mark the passage of time. They meander back and forth between past, present and future, combining incredulous questioning, embodied introspection, magical thinking, and blind hope into aspirational thought.
Held in the hand, Stupads are nothing more than digital echoes of an interiorized space, created in Touching Space, a virtual reality environment I completed with the help of computer scientist Zoe Kaputa in 2024. Despite being bright and colorful, Stupads are playful gestures with a serious inquiry at their core. I see them as bodies in rest and in action, flesh and mind in a flux seeking points of anchor.
Installed in the exhibition Interiorizing at Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, 2025.