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Axis Mundi (2024) is a visually intricate painting. Crafted, unusually, from layered strands of silicone on canvas, its wild surface also has the texture of fine lace or embroidered textile. Amidst this intricacy, symbolic forms are at different stages of emergence. A scene is unfolding that could be described as surreal, sci-fi, or mythic; part landscape, part cosmos; a scene in which something astonishing is about to happen.
The painting’s most distinct symbolic form—visible in its left-hand portion—is an unembellished, rectangular frame, resembling a doorway, gateway, or portal. It is ambiguously positioned on top of a dark hill that spans much of the painting’s foreground and looks as though it could lead in several directions. But it is also illuminated from behind and centrally aligned with a glowing column that seems to have been spun entirely from light. Thus, it appears to be our means of access into this, the most radiant portion of the painting. The artist. Walter Hayn, associates the column primarily with the biblical image of Jacob’s ladder from Genesis 28. This interpretation would make the painting a prophetic dreamscape—a sacred scene.
This brings me to the painting’s third discernible form, pictured on the right, and seemingly moving with purpose towards the rectangular portal. (The latter far too small, surely, to accommodate it?) It is an enormous egg-shaped rock, a meteor perhaps, suspended as it is in space. On top of its roughly hewn surface (here the silicone has become sculptural in its thickness, and the form appears to protrude into our own space as viewers) are indications of a rickety structure that resembles a once imposing but now dilapidated church. There is a sense that a rescue mission is taking place. Will the fragile-looking church be manoeuvred safely through the impossibly minute portal and into the safety and hope of that light-filled place?
The structure of light towards which the broken church is being carried is the “axis mundi” of the painting’s title, the axis of the world, an idea has been found in diverse religious traditions and has taken many forms: a great pillar, a great tree, a cosmic mountain, a column of smoke or fire, a tower, a ladder, a staircase, a steeple, a totem pole and, for Christians, the Cross of Christ. But what each form of the axis mundi has in common is that it is taken to connect the “three cosmic regions” of heaven, earth, and hell.1
In a Jewish context, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem can be considered as the axis mundi. It is the location of both Solomon's Temple and the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. As well as being the prime site of encounter with God’s glory, it was also believed to go “deep down into the subterranean waters (tehom)”.2 Thalia N. Helpert Rodis explains that, "The Hebrew word [tehom] is often translated as ‘abyss’ or ‘the deep.’ Once one reads carefully about tehom in its many biblical contexts,” she continues, “it becomes clear that these translations of tehom provide shallow understandings of the fullness of tehom. Tehom seems to be an unstoppable raw energy which God can contain and then unleash for the purposes of destroying or creating, harming or nourishing”.3 In the New Testament, this abyss is associated with the place to which Christ descended after his death on the Cross. Thus, the axis mundi can enable ascent into the heavens as well as descent into chaos. Ultimately, though, chaos is overcome by the light and grace of obedience which, as Christ decisively demonstrated, always involves sacrifice.
As I see it, then, if Hayn’s Axis Mundi portrays a call to realignment with the centre, namely God, the creator, source of life, and source of salvation, it is also a challenging meditation on the question of choice: will you pass through the narrow door? Will you ascend or descend? But the great enabling force at issue is not human but divine. It is the power of God-given salvation. However hurt and weak we are, it is as we build our broken lives upon Christ, the Rock, that we are brought securely home. In this painting, as in all Hayn’s works in silicone, this message is underlined by his use of that material. For silicone is above all a great sealant. Metaphorically, therefore, it speaks of protection from the destructive waters of the great abyss, that swirling rawness to which the surface of this canvas might also be seen to allude; it affirms the sure gift of safe passage into the true centre that sustains all that exists.
Notes
- See Mircea Eliade, “Symbolism of the ‘Centre’.” In Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism, translated by Philip Mairet, London: Harvill Press, 1961, p. 40.
- Eliade, p. 41.
- Thalia N. Helpert Rodis, ‘Abstract,’ The Depths of Tehom: An exploration of Tehom in Hebrew Bible, Rabbinic Literature, and Contemporary Thought, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Graduate Rabbinical Program, New York, January 23, 2020, n.p. See also Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious, New York: Schocken Books, 2009.
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Walter Hayn, Axis Mundi, 80 x 98 cm, 2024.
Walter Hayn is originally from Durban, South Africa, and has lived in London since 1997 He balances part-time school art teaching with working out of a studio in South East London. His body of work – larger paintings on canvas and sculptures – arises out of many smaller drawings on paper which he posts regularly on Instagram. He regards these drawings as ‘seed ideas’ which may potentially grow into the larger works. In recent years he has been painting and sculpting using a variety of unconventional media such as industrial silicone, fillers and bitumen, and I also continues to use more traditional oil and acrylic paints.
Jorella Andrews is Professor Emeritus of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London, a research fellow at the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge, and leads the stewardship of a public green space in London.
