*I believe it was important for Hong Kong to see this piece in a cultural magazine I worked for — it was 2011 at the time I reached out to Alex and Allyson Grey… After we received images post interview, management said publishing the artwork, questions and answers would not be in line with their publication guidelines. I have saved these exchanges (unmodified) and hope to share it now…please visit cosm.org for the images they had hoped to share with Hong Kong 10 years ago.
VCXY: Does difference in cultural space, for instance, the shift from the United States to China, necessitate ‘translation’ of your explorations of the self and other, human and divine, and their eventual reconciliation or dissolution?
Alex and Allyson Grey: Obviously, the verbal or written discussions of my work need to be translated from English to Chinese. I can only hope that a spiritually developed translator would be involved.
My quest in art is for a universal symbol system that can bootstrap the evolution of consciousness toward a peaceful and creative planetary civilization. We live on one world. The arts are the intersection where diverse cultural minds meld. Some feelings embedded in artworks cannot be adequately articulated in words, yet may transmit a state of being. Portraits of the Buddha and Bodhisattva, are Sacred Mirrors of possibility for our own enlightenment. These powerful universal archetypes of liberated beings are drawn from the visionary imagination.
VCXY: Artistic movements comport one towards the recognition of and responsibility towards the other. Where do you see transformative art informing and being contoured by morality and ethics, codes and conventions, society and the self?
Alex and Allyson Grey: I see it in my own work. My artwork puts forward a mystically inspired moral agenda that human beings should respect the miracle of existence itself. When you treat others as you’d like to be treated it is an expression of Oneness because you recognize that we all are One Great Being. Four billion years ago there was blue green algae on planet earth and now we are doing interviews on the internet. That is the miracle of the evolution of consciousness.
VCXY: In certain mystical traditions, desire is the designated vehicle for mystical union with the divine as beloved. Do you see love, in its multiplicity, from physical attraction to codified sentiment, rooting or transcending such sentiment?
Alex and Allyson Grey: Both simultaneously. When we see a skillfully crafted yab-yum sculpture, our body is uplifted in it’s attraction to the bliss state, symbolically represented by the tantric union of the Buddhas. Our transcendent Buddha Nature enjoys being embodied.
VCXY: If information and its vehicles, mind and body, deployed as concrete acts of consciousness, (re)configure knowledge and power, does art provide the primal fabric for sustained self reflection , expression, transformation?
Alex and Allyson Grey: I believe it does for both the artist and the viewer. All over the world we can form an appreciation for the greatest artists. The arts are the perfect bridge for cultural exchange. The arts are the handmaiden of evolutionary impulses. Artists are notoriously sensitive and can be in contact with angelic or demonic forces. Attitudes expressed through art become harbingers of future modes of being.
VCXY: The dissolution of (perceived) difference appears an important thread linking your works. Where do you locate resonances of that impulse with articulation(s) of identity essential to psychosocial existence?
Alex and Allyson Grey: The basic message of my artwork is in great resonance and coherence with the perennial philosophy, the mystic core of the great Wisdom traditions: that the macrocosm and microcosm reverberate in hierarchical unity; that creativity is holy; that life is an evolutionary miracle; that everything is connected; and that love and compassion are the highest values. My work aims at an integral mapping of the nature of consciousness and the synthesis of creativity and spirituality. This intention, to identify creativity as a mystic force, has led to the co-creation, with my wife Allyson, of CoSM, Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, cosm.org, a spiritual center celebrating visionary art of all disciplines.
