Mi Pavilion Garden Universal Tales - Interview Carolina Wajon

I see paintings on emotions, worldviews, on the subject beauty. Why did you put these paintings together?

Carolina: Do is about being on a living planet. Re is about living a life with a start and an ending. In Mi we walk into the area of personal experience. Everyone is born with a different character. Some people are more physically orientated such as athletes. Some are emotionally orientated, like musicians who can move an audience. Others are orientated as thinkers, scientists for instance. In addition to your orientation, your willpower may be strongly or weakly developed. Our emotions, or perhaps better said, our states of mind, are in my opinion an important driving force behind our behavior. The way we behave and relate to others also expresses our worldview. In the world of today our behavior is very, very often determined by money and dominance. In personal relationships, it is more often about loving each other and mutual understanding. My last worldview is giving space to all people in a respectful, harmonious lifestyle. It’s about a world of diversity and yet it’s still one world. But what then, holds it together? Well, beauty is our intercultural, timeless glue.

You seem very sure about this. Could you explain why beauty is so important?

Carolina: Yes, for me it is a very profound personal experience. So profound, that the whole project “The Garden of Universal Tales” revolves around the theme beauty. Nature uses beauty as a primary force to attract the one to the other. It works in plants, in animals and in humans. Have you ever seen images of cells? Beautiful. Have you ever seen the milky way with all the stars by night? Beautiful. “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it,” said Confucius, the Chinese philosopher. I agree with that, though I do have trouble seeing beauty in warfare. As an artist I experience war as the most extreme ugliness. In my perspective the opposite of war is not peace, but beauty. Beauty cannot be learned by reading about it. Beauty has to be experienced. It is something that affects your nervous system and thereby it affects you. It’s a kind of harmonic state of mind and enriches your quality of life. That’s what this project is about.

Which painting in the yellow Mi pavilion gives you the most profound beauty experience?

Carolina: That depends on the point of view. From a visual perspective, the four big paintings titled “Beauty in action” are my personal favorites. Starting from an ethical perspective the more abstract painting titled “The beauty of empathy, everybody counts” touches my heart deeply. Painting so many names has generated much love and acceptance in myself. It was a beautiful and empathic experience for me. But please, do not look too much at my favorites and my experiences. What you experience yourself while seeing the paintings is much more interesting. And share your experiences with others, I would say.