Axis Mundi symbolically forms the connection of several spheres of the world, in mythology called underworld, earth and heaven. The center can be a tree, a rope, a mountain or a tower. In this installation, the centerpiece is a crystal model of a crystal representing a regularly arranged solid form of matter in which the building blocks, atoms or molecules, are grouped in a repeating pattern. The strength of the structure of this crystal is stable and periodically preserved in the entire volume, therefore we can consider it as an ideal regular formation, which under optimal conditions can extend infinitely far in all directions.

The crystal is covered with hand embroidery of a starry sky on dark velvet. During several months of embroidery preparation, the mind is often put in a special state. According to available sources, some North American Indians sang sacred and protective songs to each other while embroidering, and the thread thus became a message of wishes and thoughts. Everything is connected and with this awareness the embroidery was gradually created. To observe the world with the acquisition of ideas, how to be whole, how to be aware and with the need to learn to live with the uncertainty of today. A common world is never given to us, but we must painstakingly create it, try to break free from the manipulation of human desire, from the economic regime of extraction, production and consumption, from paradoxical destruction and adopt the position of critical optimism.

Dagmar Šubrtová