Brooklyn Zen Center | A New York City Soto Zen Buddhist Temple
Claudia Vieira: Double Trace

The No-Eyes Viewing Wall at Brooklyn Zen Center presents a new project by New York-based Brazilian artist Claudia Vieira.  Double Trace will open on Saturday June 11, 2011 and stay up through October 26, 2011.
 
Since 2001, Claudia Vieira has worked with a single drawn line, which may fill paper, wall, or a large space. The line inscribes time; it measures her commitment to drawing; it follows the meta-line of her life.  She marks every environment that she encounters by means of a sustained concentrated effort, and these marks become records of her physical endurance that ultimately hum with optical intensity.  As she says, “It paradoxically blurs assumed boundaries between origin and destination, inside and outside and ultimately, self and other.” Claudia has exhibited this work in many venues, including “Waterline,” a drawing environment at the Queens Museum of Art in 2010.
 
For this exhibition, Claudia has been requested to make a drawing in two stages, filling one large paper sheet stretched over the entire No-Eyes Viewing Wall.  The first stage begins in early June, when Claudia will draw on one side of the paper.  Working within the context of the Zen Center, her drawing practice will merge with contemplative routine, as she lets go of preconceived expectations for the overall drawing.  After this stage, Claudia will embark upon her annual journey to Brazil, retracing the path of her life in two hemispheres.  When she returns, Claudia will complete the second stage of the work, filling the remaining half of the wall with a single line, thus confronting and completing a previous mind-document.
 
The scope of this project is not limited to the inner life of Claudia Vieira, but also includes the Brooklyn Zen Center sangha, a community whose first meditation space was founded in the artist’s home in Brooklyn.  Following this karmic intertwining, the challenge of the vast white paper, approached without preconceptions, will be shared by all who return to the space for their weekly meditation practice.