Bildausschnitt:
Paradiesgarten, Nepal, 2004, Teppich aus Wolle, verdichtete Knüpftechnik, Friedhofskapelle Wallenhorst
Konzept: Mario Haunhorst, Realisierung durch drei Meisterknüpfer in Katmandu
My thoughts start circling. If butterflies can't see their wings, I guess they don't see how beautiful they actually are. Nor do they see what lifts them up. Is it different with us? Do we see our own potential? Or do we always need a "you" as a living mirror, an experience that shows us what life and love can be for us and thus contribute to us becoming more, that we grow and become more? What impulse helps the caterpillar, which leaves its cocoon after its transformation into a butterfly, to suddenly ascend into the air? What makes the butterfly take off, fly and experience the fact that it is a being created for ascension? Psyche in Greek not only means soul, but also refers to the butterfly.
People in many cultures have ascribed magical meanings to the butterfly. The attributors oscillate between fiction and truth and are sometimes more to the imagination, sometimes more to science. Isn't it a very enchanting idea to see more in the butterflies dancing in the light? But what do humans see in butterflies? Living in changes of state, metamorphoses, depletions? In detachments and literally heavenly ascents? What scientific findings form the framework and what magical poetry draws from the power of this change? What dreams?
It should be indisputable that it is more about symbolic value than about the question of reality. The bright sky in which the butterflies dance becomes a parable for knowledge, growth and liberation in connection with what has become, with one's own origins. Just as in a caterpillar the butterfly with its potential is already laid out. Seen in this way, a theopoetic story of the Ascension would be a symbol of maturity and perfection with regard to our highly personal potential, which is at work and alive in us. Heaven would then be our unconditional idea of salvation, of the wholeness of the longing side of our lives, towards which we would like to change and perfect ourselves.
A fantastic side that shows up and manifests itself differently in each and every one of them. The fact that we don't see things as they are, but as we see them with our eyes, makes the path clear and always existentially challenging at the same time - socially, politically and personally. It makes all the difference.
Mario Haunhorst