Wenger’s understanding of the forest can be understood as emerging in relation to navigation between a confluence of factors. The first of these factors is represented by the relationship between the material space of the forest and her understanding of the various aspects of significance constituted by that space.
She navigates between the material reality of the forest’s space and her understanding of that space as also embodying forms of being which are neither animal, elemental or vegetative in their totality but which participate in or are to some degree constituted by these material forms.
The other set of factors in relation to which she shapes her understanding of the forest is represented by the communities of thought whose ideas influence her conception of the metaphysical significance of the geography of the forest.
The interpretive communities whose hermeneutic paradigms she draws upon,are, principally, the Yoruba Orisha tradition,which is directly related to the forest since the forest is in Yorubaland in South-West Nigeria,and, Jungian psychology, which provides her with a means of interpreting cultural confluence across time and space. Secondarily, Taoism, which influences her understanding of the ideational possibilities of physical space, both natural and humanly constructed, and, Tibetan Buddhism, the influence of which seems to be suggested in her conjunction of expansive abstract thought which attempts to unite mind and cosmos in its terrestrial and cosmic aspects with a concrete visualisation of complex ideas evident in both her writing and her art.
In Wenger's experience in relation to the Oshun Forest the opportunities provided by the vagaries of chance are transformed into hermeneutic pathways through which the artist becomes a conduit for mediation between material and cultural forms represented by the forest and the interpretive communities whose thought worlds inspire her in her immersive relationship with the elemental space of the forest and which she draws upon to conceptualise the outcomes emerging from that encounter.
The interpretive communities whose hermeneutic paradigms she draws upon,are, principally, the Yoruba Orisha tradition,which is directly related to the forest since the forest is in Yorubaland in South-West Nigeria,and, Jungian psychology, which provides her with a means of interpreting cultural confluence across time and space. Secondarily, Taoism, which influences her understanding of the ideational possibilities of physical space, both natural and humanly constructed, and, Tibetan Buddhism, the influence of which seems to be suggested in her conjunction of expansive abstract thought which attempts to unite mind and cosmos in its terrestrial and cosmic aspects with a concrete visualisation of complex ideas evident in both her writing and her art.
In Wenger's experience in relation to the Oshun Forest the opportunities provided by the vagaries of chance are transformed into hermeneutic pathways through which the artist becomes a conduit for mediation between material and cultural forms represented by the forest and the interpretive communities whose thought worlds inspire her in her immersive relationship with the elemental space of the forest and which she draws upon to conceptualise the outcomes emerging from that encounter.
