“TRA. Edge of Becoming” took place during the Biennale of Venice of 2011 and was again a huge success. TRA brought together the rich legacy of Mariano Fortuny, the wabi inspirations of Axel Vervoordt, the reflexions of the economic thinker Bernard Lietaer, the scientist Eddi de Wolf and the architect Tatsuro „Taro‟ Miki, and aimed to create an aesthetic, intellectual and enlightening experience which encouraged the visitor to read the world through art.

The curatorial team for TRA was composed of Daniela Ferretti, director of Palazzo Fortuny; Rosa Martínez, independent curator and art advisor; Francesco Poli, philosopher and art history professor; and Axel Vervoordt, president of the Axel & May Vervoordt FoundationThe title of the exhibition is TRA. Chosen for its strong and suggestive conciseness, that includes also the word “art” (if read at the inverse). As preposition it signifies “in-between”, “inside”, and as prefix it has also the meaning of an action that goes “beyond”, “ahead of”. As a suffix, TRA is common to many Sanskrit words: mantra, tantra, yantra…

TRA recalls the complex and problematic ensemble of cultural and symbolic meanings that are connected to the concept of threshold and door. It concerns a physical and mental place that defines the point of interrelation between inside and outside and vice versa. It relates to the idea of crossing, of being purified and renovated through a ritual or an initiation. It is the space (or empty space) between two dimensions that marks the moment of passage from a condition to another, a breach towards new experiences. It is the idea of border that, seen from the point of view of its surpass, becomes site of process of creative transformation.

The subtitle of the exhibition TRA is EDGE OF BECOMING. It relates to the void as the pregnant possibility of energy, to chaos as the state of infinite becoming, and to becoming as the movement towards a situation. While the rational, empiric and technological Western world has abused of the male and Ying power, the Eastern systems of knowledge have always sustained the dynamic processes of non-linear interaction between Yin and Yang polarities. TRA. EDGE OF BECOMING is also looking for that healing balance, for a creative interaction that unfolds every beginning, every birth, every renaissance.

Info: http://www.axel-vervoordt.com/en/inside/foundation/exhibitions/tra-edge-of-becoming