जSड़ोंIभूLमि3गNतCमैं3 by Tony Katai
“I’ve been influenced by certain people throughout my journey — Never truly by any photographers or visual artists I see, mostly criminals or rebels. Mostly I enjoy finding inspiration from the air, trees, water & animals.”
“I have been working on जSड़ोंIभूLमि3गNतCमैं3 (SILENCE) for three/ four years. It began when I left society to live in the mountains. I reconnected with my roots & started exploring my art in nature. I didn’t know what I had begun, but looking back I see that I had planted a seed that became a tree of some sort, bearing fruits & more seeds. I went through a lot of changes through cultivating my mind — unlearning mostly everything (pulling the weeds) & going in, understanding love/ meditation. Last summer I brought everything into one — my garden of trees are all connected & I had realized what I had done… Now it’s all one. It’s the roots underground growing every way. No Direction. Always all ways. I trust myself that the people I’m creating with need no direction & that they are pieces of art themselves. At ease within the experience. Relaxed. Magic cannot be staged, it must flow without thought — pure awareness. Silence will never end — It is the theme of my work.“
“It took many years to fine tune my creations & understand myself. The way I see it, Art is an absolute reflection of the self. True art is made through silence, Therefore one must be silent as one creates. When I say silent, I mean thoughtless. To have no thought enables your brain to fully focus on the moment one hundred percent. Art is love. Love is awareness. Therefore true art which resonates love, can only be crafted through total awareness. In total awareness nothing can be more. You are only confined by your knowledge. The more alone & more silent you become, the more knowledge flows into you. This journey of life is so beautiful if you want it to be. Use your brain function to develop beautiful mind gardens. Check for weeds & tend to your dreams by watering them and watching them grow. Utilize your experiences by fully submerging yourself within them, storing information like a database in the mind, ready for any given moment to deploy it. When I create, I see certain things manifest through the energy. Fragments of information I’ve stored within my brain — Fragments of infinity, things that will always be a part of me. There is an inner language to understand that allows you to communicate with no boundaries of time or space. Anything is possible. Literally. I got the Pharaohs on speed dial.”
“Silence, or Moksha, is the ultimate goal in life. It is understanding aloneness / becoming silent within & removing all boundaries to exit from the cycle of birth & death… Enlightenment. Look at life. You live and die over & over again. Fear controls the culture / society. Gods & stories are crafted to comfort everyone’s fears. People go insane. It’s all just a big illusion. Learn to be alone, be you. Be Godly to yourself. Love yourself…. Death doesn’t exist within infinity — Time doesn’t exist here either. You put time limits on your life and it creates confusion. The future is an illusion you create. Death controls you, but you are here, death is of the future. Look at the clock right now, it has no time. As soon as you say it’s a time it has already moved past. Now has no time. No beginning or end to it. Just a flow. Live life with no limitations. Be silent within, operate this way & watch your perception move beyond this physical realm. Once you’re beyond, go beyond-beyond. Beyond beyond is home. Your own dimension.”
“I used to think its all about the approach. I don’t think like that anymore — How does one approach something when starting from the center? If everything is always all ways, then approaching is going to be backwards. You must start at the center, like dropping a stone in the water, move like the ripples — flowing outwards becoming bigger. If you are approaching something let it be a book written by an intelligent being.”
Thanks for reading this interview with Detroit-based photographer Tony Katai.
To see more of Katai’s work visit his Instagram or Website.
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Originally published on Art Narratives
