Breathing with Tara: creating spaces for dissolving eco-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’.
At his Casa Tara art studio in Santiago de Compostela, David has been experimenting with initial prototypes of this magnetically mounted mosaic using Tara’s crown chakra geometries (253 pieces total!), as shown in the timelapse below.
Breathing With Tara
With support from the US National Science Foundation Fluxnet Artist-in-Residency program (USA), the ArtSci International non-profit (UK), the Xunta de Galicia (España), David has been commissioned to develop a full laser-cut replica of the Perú Jungle Tara, to be toured as an installation which can travel the world, creating spaces for people to dissolve their fears and eco-anxiety into contemplation & prayer. Provisionally entitled Breathing with Tara, a document outlining the working installation concept is available here.
Interested to get involved?
If you are interested in helping this new Tara emerge, 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, constructing a frame, packing up the pieces, and developing a system for secure international air transport. In addition, there are songs to be composed, and audio to be recorded. Three specific installs are on the horizon: (1) the Contemplative Technologies of Sound and Light Symposium at the University of Virginia Contemplative Sciences Center from 9 - 11 Oct. 2025 (setup 3 - 8 Oct & packdown 12/13 Oct) ; (2) the Berkeley Alembic beginning 20 Oct 2025 (setup 15 - 19 Oct), as part of a collaboration with Löpon Chandra Easton (who recently wrote a wonderful book Embodying Tara); and (3) the Fluxnet artist-in-residency exhibition at the Oregon State PRAx Centre for the Creative Arts to open on 22 Jan. 2026. As the project develops, further installation opportunities will likely emerge.
Given the quantity of work, David has an open call to host artistic residences for those who might be interested in getting involved. 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.
The 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 is available to support travel to/from the studio spaces, and also to pay a work stipend. Depending on interest, there may also be opportunities to assist with Tara’s international tour over the next several months. If you’re interested, get in touch with Dr. David Glowacki.