Using physical sculpture and digital animation and projection, artist Katie McIntyre creates a portal to a phygital city that recalls the power of ancient women while projecting a vision of the future that's based in a spiritual triumph into a new chapter of the liberated female form. The portal fosters an often-overlooked connection between creation, the universe and womanhood. The egg in the center is a symbol of female creation, female generative energy. At the pole of contraction, our universe existed as an invisible point of dark light, of compacted potential and energy. This was the world egg. The spiral movement that creates a center and a moving, continuous whole is also that which, when combined with gravitational contraction, creates the solar system and the atom—and on a large scale, the galaxy. As the animations evolve, we move through the universe, through colorful new worlds, and finally into the physical reality. The piece tells the journey of the universe into a conscious physical being through the womb of a woman. The piece although universal is deeply personal; it is an example of the immense power and struggle the artist cultivated while surviving brutal environments inside the world’s biggest tech companies—giving birth to creations using technical prowess in spite of adversity. The alchemy of turning pain into power is represented by the women struggling their way forward out of the weeds, empowered but faced with steep obstacles. “The universe exists as sleeping darkness, unknowable, unknown, wholly immersed in deep sleep. Does she dream in sleep or only when she wakes? We know not. She sleeps. And then in her sleep the divine self appears with passionate creative power. She stirs, dispelling darkness. She who is subtle and full of desire, imperceptible and everywhere, now and eternal, who contains all created beings, wakes—then the world stirs. When she slumbers tranquilly, the universe sinks into sleep. Thus she, the imperishable one—who seems always perishing, always changing—alternatively waking and sleeping, incessantly revivifies and destroys the whole of creation.” — Excerpt From The Great Cosmic Mother