Lia Chavez, “The Garden is You” 20 August 2022 The Salting at Lumber + Salt is pleased to present “The Garden is You,” a performance created by Hildegaard founder artist Lia Chavez that gives new and haunting form to her lifelong endeavor to unite physical light and inner illumination in an inextricable dance. A bare practice of meditation based loosely on Chavez’s superconscious discourses with the light of Nature which she’s depicted throughout her career, is a central motif in this performative work. References to the work of 12th Century polymath Hildegard von Bingen appear through Chavez’s performance and her herbology practice, which is consolidated in the artist’s most recent aesthetic-philosophic endeavor, Hildegaard. Additionally, von Bingen was an unsparing observer of an ensouled cosmos, which is an overarching theme in this and many of Chavez’s recent botanical works. In Chavez’s performance, meditative gestures are rendered in a distinctly agrarian language, presenting an organic play of selfhood which floats subversively against the backdrop of rectangular, Post-Enlightenment identity politic. Notions of seeding and transplanting awareness are set before the viewer in a process of considering how intentionality impacts the architecture of the soul. The meditations also incorporate liquids, in the form of purified water and oils crafted by the artist, which render the body itself as a stage of meditative absorption, with porous surfaces which serve spiritual receptivity like an earth horizon. Set in the schematic of bodily sensation, Chavez’s loose, expressive meditations are punctuated by choreographic gestures, from which personal ritual is imprinted upon the subconscious of the viewer. Although the subject matter of the performance calls to mind the embodied aspects of contemplative experience – Chavez proposes an invitation to the supernatural dimension which vibrates with its own green life. This paradoxical effect is testament to the artist’s determination to grapple with the challenge of her relationship to cosmic sentience – her own and that of her loved ones. @hildegaardlife @thesaltingnyc @lumberandsalt