Enigmata/Rose (3) 1998

Enigmata/Rose (3) is from Whiten’s seminal three-part series comprised of Enigmata, 1994–96, Enigmata/Rose, 1996–98, and Enigmata/Shower of Roses, 2002.  All of the works in the Enigmata series are made from salvaged hospital sheets stained with coffee. The artist used white cotton percale sheets for Enigmata and Enigmata/Rose, made in Toronto, and unbleached muslin for Enigmata/Shower of Roses, produced in Brazil.  Incorporating found and natural materials, each piece in this series is intended to be wall-mounted, occupying a space between two and three dimensions. Like previous works by Whiten, the human figure here is represented in absentia, its presence denoted by the physical traces left on the hospital sheets.

In the first two series, the hospital laundry stamp is visible, as are rips, repairs, and stains in the fabric. Like a burial shroud, we see emanations of a bodily presence and absence, the subtle permutations of life forces interwoven in the fabric—further marked by the rippling and striations left by the poured coffee, its coloration reminiscent of bodily fluids. A visual depression demarcates the position of the head. Operating between image and object, the visceral quality of the works, the unframed borders of the sheets, and the aroma of coffee held by the threads of the textiles invoke a somatic, unmediated experience.

Whiten’s use of infirmary sheets reflects his continued exploration of themes underscoring the cycles of life, evident in works such as Morada, 1977, and Metamorphosis, 1978–89. Each bodily impression has its own cadence, conveying a personal history of events and interrelationships. Carrying the layered energy of lives lived, each reveals an indexical iconography of bodily fluids—manifestations of birth, death, sleep, suffering, illness, war, presence, and absence—as if bearing witness to life’s physical transmutations. Collectively, they unfold as maps of human experience.

The artist comments: “The marks on these Enigmata pieces documented an act of passage, which left a visceral imprint of that which was once present.”  In this series, the immateriality and impermanence of Whiten’s shrouds echo the provisional nature of the physical body as a temporal vessel. For the artist, “they represent the passing through the portal and provide an understanding of materiality as both vestige and vessel of the transcendental.”

The series title, Enigmata, suggests that which is obscured; specifically, an esoteric understanding or knowledge that is outside of one’s conscious grasp. In Enigmata/Rose, the imprint of a rose blossom stands in for the human heart. A complex symbol embracing earthly passion and heavenly perfection, it is also the centre point of the cross and of unity, a portal or aperture to the ineffable. Echoing the phrases of the Sufi poet Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (1207–1273), this series begs the question: “What is the body? That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe.”