For Wisharawish Akarasantisook, the cores and values of Yantra lie in its process that he considers a form of meditation as it calls upon all human’s three Vajras (body, speech, and soul) to work together in perfect unison with the hand working on sacred scripts and symbols, the chanting of mantras, and the full concentration needed to perform the task.
Looking more closely, the process of Yantra is a repetition of drawing and deleting of the mantras. Upon the completion of the drawing, the mantra is then deleted only to be re-drawn and deleted over and over again along the process that somehow follows the Buddhist concept of Samsara. The ritual ends with the final deletion of the Mantra reminiscent of a form of emptiness known as Sunyata or “Zero”. As a fashion designer, Wisharawish communicates these spiritual symbols through the details of this sculptural installation of costume designs named Zero. By employing masterful techniques and fine craftsmanship on simple materials that cost next to nothing, he composes a narrative paralleled to his own interpretation of Yantra with the design and production process as the very core. Leaf skeletons are uniformly cut into geometric shapes and sewn together before being tactfully crafted in a repetitive manner to create a complete cycle at the Zero point mimicking the Samsara and the Sunyata. Even the spiritual nature of Yantra, itself, is also reflected in the light and semi-transparent characteristics shared among all the chosen materials that result in the kind of ethereal beauty that, like Yantra, borders on both reality and fantasy.
Wisharawish Akarasantisook 