Breathing with Tara: creating spaces for dissolving anxiety & fear into contemplation
Enabling Jungle Tara to travel beyond the Upper Amazon
The original 2mx2m painting of Jungle Tara was constructed from Jan 2022 - Jun 2024 by Dr. David Glowacki at an ayahuasca house in Northern Perú, which you can read more about here. As part of the process of visualizing and painting this Tara, David spent hundreds of hours, often alone, in communion with the native plants Ayahuasca and Chakruna. On countless occasions, he witnessed Jungle Tara’s ability to offer a space of balance and grounding for people, many of whom had no prior experience with Tara.
Jungle Tara’s potency arises in part because she is a distillation of Tara’s essential aspects. Resting in an eyes-open state of soft panoramic awareness, David discovered very simple instructions that seemed to help people contemplate her: As you softly gaze on Tara, imagine she is an energetic mirror, reflecting back at you elements of wisdom and compassion which radiate from yourself.
There have been several requests to install Jungle Tara at different places across the world, so that she can radiate her wisdom, compassion, and healing energy to benefit people beyond those at a remote site in Perú. Figuring out a way to make Jungle Tara portable whilst preserving her essential beauty and qualities is an artistic & technical challenge. The idea is to construct Jungle Tara from thousands of hand-painted laser cut pieces of aluminum, which can be magnetically affixed within a wooden stand. Rear projected backlights will shine through the joins of the individual mosaic pieces, enabling her to glow with the subtle light of the moon, honoring the celestial origin of her Sanksrit name, which means ‘star’.
The video below shows initial experiments carried out at the Casa Tara art studio in Santiago de Compostela, developing initial prototypes of this magnetically mounted mosaic using the crown chakra geometries (253 pieces total), as shown in the timelapse below.
With previous support from the US National Science Foundation Fluxnet Artist-in-Residency program (USA), the ArtSci International non-profit (UK), and the Sacred Ground non-profit (Portugal), David is developing laser-cut variations of the Perú Jungle Tara, which are portable and can be installed so as to create spaces where people can dissolve their fears and anxiety into contemplation & prayer. The first variation of this Tara was installed as part of the Sensemaking Symposium at the University of Virginia Contemplative Sciences Center from 9 - 11 Oct. 2025. Building on the lessons learned during this making process, David is presently constructing a second version at his art studio in the mountains of Northern Portugal, near the beautiful D’Alijo Yoga and Retreat Center.
Interested to get involved?
There is a lot of work to be done (probably thousands of hours of work…) including for example: preparing the digital files required to laser cut the individual mosaic pieces, sanding and assembling the pieces, hand-painting each of the individual pieces, attaching the magnets, varnishing the painted pieces, developing a system for secure transport, and much more…
For those interested in helping these Taras emerge, David is open to the idea of hosting artistic residencies. Prior art-making experience is beneficial, but not essential, so long as there is a willingness to learn. As a contemplative artwork, the Tara-making process shares similarities with a long-form meditation practice. The most important qualities are being present, attentive to detail, careful, and dedicated to the process of creating a piece charged with sacred energy in order to benefit beings in all dimensions, seen and unseen.
This work is taking place across two venues: the Casa Tara art studio in Santiago de Compostela, and the Jungle Tara art studio in northern Portugal near D’Alijo yoga & retreat center (one hour east of Porto). Both venues have available facilities for hosting artistic residents. Funding and support are available depending on need. If you’re interested, get in touch with Dr. David Glowacki.