Without the rain dance, there is no rain. Ceremonies and rituals make the sun shine and the rain fall. With the destruction of the cultural knowledge systems and practices of care that bridge humanity and nature, our world has fallen out of balance. The moment we objectified land, removed spirit from the land, we commodified it and enabled a relationship of exploitation and destruction. Climate Change is rooted in the breakdown of communication between humans and the natural world. A one-sided relationship, the destruction of the planet is predicated upon the commodification and objectification of land. Mission critical to the sustainability movement is to transform our consciousness of the land from a resource we are trying to exploit less of “in a sustainable way” and return to the indigenous world view of being in right relationship with the spirit of the land, the earth as a mother and goddess to work with in ceremony and devotion.
BIO
Jessica Kung Dreyfus 龔捷西 (gong jie xi) is an Asian American cross-disciplinary artist, designer, and writer. She is the founder of Make Conscious.
Her creative practice is a contemporary expression of the Ancient Chinese view of Landscape 山水 (shan shui) as a form of consciousness that finds expression in art, architecture, and poetry. Her focused gaze and the powerful containers that her work creates are influenced by her multi-cultural methodology for transformation, her deep-seated belief in the resilience of humanity, and her decades long Buddhist training. She completed a 450 day silent meditation retreat from 2010-2012 with her partner Stéphane Dreyfus and has been teaching consciousness and creativity for over 15 years.
She has exhibited and performed her work at museums and galleries around the world including Centrale Montemartini in Rome, Italy, the De Young in San Francisco, CA, and the European Art Center in Xiamen, China. Her work is held in private collections in New York, London, Rome, Shanghai, and San Francisco.
Education: B.A. cum laude, Yale University, Architecture M.F.A., California College of the Arts