ISU prof examines sacred spaces
BLOOMINGTON -- In James Mai's panoramic shot of the Taj Mahal, the Indian landmark is shown from the rear.
He was atypically close to a wall when he photographed, making the building seem taller than in most shots and de-emphasizing the dome of the great mausoleum in Agra.
Photographs typically depict the Taj Mahal from the front, at a distance.
Mai is giving a lesson in his selection of photos. He wants to demonstrate that the architects intended a visual experience that changes with the changing light and a person's position.
The Taj Mahal, he says, "encourages you to move through it and stop at certain points and look again at the architecture in order to reveal a new face, a new characteristic."
It is, he says, as if the building itself has life.
Mai, pronounced "my," examined sacred buildings of multiple religions in a recent exhibition at the McLean County Arts Center in downtown Bloomington.
The centerpiece photo for the exhibition was from a Hindu temple in Khajuraho, India. Mai deliberately used a frame in which a woman visitor at the site snapped his photograph as he took his photographs. This frame is talking back to us just as the architects of sacred landmarks continue to speak.
An art professor for Illinois State University, Mai teaches that sacred architecture presents microcosms -- miniaturized visions of the world, underworlds, upperworlds and afterworlds.
They are positioned with regard to landscape and in a context.
The reason for the location of Stonehenge in England's countryside remains a mystery, but Mai states that obviously that exact site meant something, because the stones for it were hauled for miles. Its alignment of stones matches the changes of the sun's position.
Some sacred sites are positioned for cardinal directions -- east, west, north, south -- some are sited for lunar and solar alignments and some use a combination.
Ancient sacred sites relate to God and deities but also astronomy, agriculture, water supply -- all of life, says Mai. They are both observatory and church and they act as guidebook -- places where in ancient days and today families can study carvings to learn about God, faith, values and life.
Their elaborate expanses change mood and mind as they summon worshippers into journeys and spiritual experience and shape their worldviews, he says.
The meaning of artwork may be harder to grasp in a Muslim mosque, because as Mai notes, Muslim teaching prohibits figurative representations. The emphasis in mosques is geometric patterns.
Mai, who also is an abstract painter, may be wired for a special appreciation.
"These are not just decorations," he said at a recent talk at the arts center. "These are manifestations of the sacred as it exists in the world, at all levels -- from the smallest small to the largest large."
A Jain temple in India provides Mai's most literal, pure example of the temple as a microcosm. The interior courtyard is what amounts to a massive sculpture explaining the faith, and Jain writings are attached to the walls of the courtyard.
With perhaps similar intent, Teotihuacan builders north of modern-day Mexico City created a microcosm. The shape of the Pyramid of the Moon and the Pyramid of the Sun mimic the landscape behind them and the two are joined by the Street of the Dead. The alignment put the pyramids and street in a straight line from the setting sun on Aug. 13. That was the day of creation celebrated in Teotihuacan.