It is a very auspicious Hindu deity. In essence it is the union of male and female, and is the combination of the Indian god Shiva (masculine power) and the Goddess Shakti (female power). It is also the embodiment of the Buddhist ideal that there are no dualities. "Oh," you say.
It is also the first idol I have ever made, in that it is the first representation of a living religious idea I have ever created. I have made “Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow,” and the Goddess Dawn, Nut the Sky Goddess and so on but they are from dead religions. People actually worship Ardhanarishvaras today.
I made it frantically as I make all my sculptures, (in almost a trance like state so that I usually don’t recall making any of my art work. It is akin to forgetting the pain of childbirth except with a lot less pain to forget). I made it for several reasons. I had been thinking of making some kind of androgynous figure for a while. I wanted to combine male and female in an attempt to erase the difference between them. I had already made a sculpture named “Soul Attire: The Skin You're in” to represent that the body you wear is just the clothing for the soul. That we are all the same on the inside, and that it is only a flip of a coin that determines what one will become. I think it is important for men and woman to realize that we are all people. The way a man feels about being abused or being loved is the same way a woman feels. She hates the first and desires the second. I felt that the story of Adam and Eve separated men and women so I wanted to join them together again. Some men always wonder why some women cannot accept their roles as fed to them by the Bible, but they never try to imagine how they would feel if the same roles were given to them. That is why I think reincarnation is the only rational belief for human beings. If you believed that after death you could by the flip of the coin become that which you hate, or have mistreated perpetually maybe you might see the light when it came to equality of all living things.
So with these ideas in my head, and the Toronto Art Expo out of the way, I was ready to make something just not something big. I wanted something small and easy to try my hand at, little did I realise that small and easy can be mutually exclusive things. So we (hubby and me) were looking on the internet on a web page about saris and there was the Ardhanarishvara. Shiva, the male side, holds a trident in his hand, which I had discovered was a symbol for creation and destruction. The snake he holds is symbolic of the Mother Goddess, the snake of eternal life. His hand was upheld to acknowledge the worshiper. The female side has a flower in her hand for boon-granting. It seemed to fit. I was just a little worried about the six arms. The arms are not real arms but show different aspects of the deity; still I was worried about the anatomy. And men’s rib cages are held at a different angle than women’s. And the face was a little troublesome. How do you make a face both male and female? I took time but I figured it out. All in all, I think it came out well.
I like it a lot and find it is a good meditative device. I have thought about it and I think it is a good representation of the Earth or Nature. These are personified as female nowadays and it is all well and good to make a divinity female, but the earth has no vagina, nor a penis, (nor does the sun either which many think of as male), but it has procreative aspects of both sexes. I think it is not good to leave anyone out of the divine. Men evidently wanted to have a male representative of the divine when the Mother goddess ruled all and that is why in the West we now have an exclusively male deity in heaven (I do find it strange, that God, who is supposed to have no form, no body, and be all spirit, is considered a male since maleness is a physical trait not a spiritual one). As a deity Ardhanarishvara is perfect and has left no one out of the divine and that is how it should be.
