The Buddhist deity Kurukulla

The Buddhist deity Kurukulla dances out her passion in both painted and bronze form. She pulls one leg upward in a classical Indian dancing posture. In the painting she draws her bow, nocks an arrow, and, just as she fires, we notice that the arrowhead is a flower! And when it strikes its target, the victim will be smitten—not overcome by pain, but subjugated by love. The bronze sculpture would once have held a bow and arrow too.

Kurukulla may seem an unlikely lover. She is laden with symbolism that shows her link with death. She treads upon a corpse and wears jewelry of bone. In the painting, the fierce flames of the cremation ground flare behind her. But there’s no contradiction because love and death are not the diametric opposites they might seem. Kurukulla reveals that the dance of life and the dance of death are not two separate performances but rather two aspects of the same.