It is with sadness that we mark the passing of Bill Viola, who was both a friend and a colleague. He was one of the pioneers of video as an artistic form, with a unique understanding of its potential for exploring spiritual truths. In an impressive body of work spanning more than forty years, he used video art to confront profound transcendent themes. Religious subjects of the great Renaissance masters were given the dimension of time in portrayals of birth, death, passion, resurrection. He used the most advanced technology to explore the oldest human emotions, and by slowing down time could shift the viewers consciousness to another world.

There is something above, beyond, below, beneath what’s in front of our eyes, what our daily life is focussed on. There’s another dimension… that can be a source of real knowledge, and the quest for connecting with that and identifying that is the whole impetus for me to cultivate these experiences and to make my work. And, on a larger scale, it is the driving force behind all religious endeavours. There is an unseen world out there and we are living in it.[1]

In 2019, on the occasion of a major exhibition at the National Gallery in London, we did a piece on Bill’s work in Beshara Magazine, based on an interview with his wife and long-time creative collaborator Kira Perov. “Bill read everything,” Kira explained. They had both studied Zen Buddhism, Sufism and Christian mysticism. The Ocean without Shore installation at the Venice Biennale in 2007 took its title from a quote by the great Andalusian mystic philosopher, Muhyyidin Ibn ‘Arabi: 

The Self is an ocean without a shore. Gazing upon it has no beginning or end, in this world and the next

This had inspired Bill to explore, in his own words, ‘the fragility of the border between life and death.’ 

After seeing images of this stunning piece I tried, as Secretary of the Ibn Arabi Society in America, to get in touch with Bill, with no success. Then in 2011, out of the blue, I was approached by a location manager who was looking for a particular hillside on which to film a section of Bill’s next work Mary – a triptych portraying stages in the life of the Virgin which is now a permanent installation in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. This happy chance encounter led to Bill, his wife Kira and team spending three days filming at our house in Ojai, just outside Los Angeles, during which time we shared meals and discussed Ibn Arabi’s writing on the Annunciation and the detailed technical challenges of the production.

Subsequently they were invited to the MIAS Latina conference in Murcia in 2013 where Bill exhibited his work and was presented with the Premio Barzaj for artistic expression of Ibn ʿArabi’s ideas. Though this prize was merely one of numerous accolades he had received in his career, he approached the event with joy – and humility. Before his presentation he had a crisis of confidence: ‘I know nothing about Ibn Arabi, I should not be speaking to these scholars’. I told him just to talk about his art, to share how this quote inspired him to create the image. He did, and of course it was rapturously received by the audience.

The rich body of work he and Kira have produced is represented in museums and sacred spaces around the world. They remain as an invitation to encounter in visual mode, over time, the unseen world. As Kira has said:

These [great existential] questions don’t belong to Bill or to myself – they belong to everybody. That is the reason these works are universal. Anyone can see them and recognise something, and they realise they can reflect on something they don’t reflect on in their normal life.

read more in beshara magazine