Mandala

Yoshiko Jinzenji

born 1942

Mandala, 1989

Where object was made: Japan

Material/technique: silk; cotton; hand piecing; pineapple fiber

Dimensions:
Object Height/Width (Height x Width): 15 x 15 cm approximate
Object Height/Width (Height x Width): 5 7/8 x 5 7/8 in

Credit line: Gift of the artist

Accession number: 2007.0102.001-33

Not on display

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Exhibition Label: "Personal Geometry: Quilts by Yoshiko Jinzenji and Virginia Jean Cox Mitchell," Feb-2014, Susan Earle and Cassandra Mesick Determined to explore cross-cultural textile traditions throughout Asia, Jinzenji has traveled extensively, collecting scraps of antique fabric wherever she could. After amassing countless scraps of brightly colored and richly textured cloth from Indonesia, India, Thailand, Japan, and Laos, she began piecing them together into diminutive quilts measuring less than 6 square. She calls these pieces mandalas, symbolic representations of the universe encountered throughout the Asian continent. Often geometric in design, mandalas are used in Buddhist practices. These mandalas rely heavily on deep shades of red, a color the artist believes manifests the vitality of Asian cultures. From a technical standpoint, these quilts are unique: rather than creating a master pattern and cutting swatches of cloth accordingly, the artist determined the geometry of the mandalas based on the properties and shapes of the precious cloth from which they were made. In Japanese iterations of Buddhism, mandalas assume one of two complementary forms: the taizokai and kongokai, the shape of which accords closely with the Log Cabin and Nine Patch shapes seen in traditional American quilts. Exhibition Label: “Quilting Time and Space,” Jun-2010, Rachel Voorhies While traveling in Asia, Jinzenji collected pieces of antique and precious fabric, which she started to piece together in designs she calls mandalas. A mandala is a symbolic geometric or pictorial representation of the universe, and mandalas are frequently used in Buddhist practice across Asia. Jinzenji also draws comparisons between the two main mandalas used in Esoteric Buddhist practice in Japan, the Womb World mandala and the Diamond World mandala, and the traditional North American quilting patterns of the Log Cabin shape and the Nine Patch.