Charwei Tsai – Page 5

The Womb & the Diamond

The Womb & The Diamond, Live Forever Foundation, Taiwan

The Womb & The Diamond
January 31 ~ May 30, 2021
Vital Space & Art Corner at Taichung National Theater, Taiwan
Curated by Dr. Jau-lan Guo

The Womb & The Diamond is a solo exhibition by Taipei-based artist Charwei Tsai and curated by Dr. Jau-lan Guo at Vital Space and Art Corner at Taichung National Theater in Taiwan. This exhibition presents a series of newly commissioned projects inspired by personal pilgrimages that the artist took in the past three years. Through these journeys, Tsai traces the wisdom tradition of tantra that is stemmed in fifth century India and through the medieval trade routes across western China, it reached furthest east to Japan, south to Java, and north to Mongolia.

The central piece of this exhibition is a six by three meter installation made with glass and mirrors in reference to The Womb & The Diamond Realm mandalas from Koyasan in Japan. Known for writing mantras on ephemeral materials, for this project, Tsai experiments with using breath and the sound of reciting one-syllable mantras to form each glass piece. These captured mantras are then placed on a circular mirror as a part of the larger mandala. Throughout the the exhibition period, visitors are invited to take a flower petal and visualize it as an entire cosmos and dedicate it to victims of the pandemic by placing the petals around the mandala.

Along her journeys, Tsai encountered rural communities many of whom are under the threat of losing their livelihoods of working with natural materials and traditional crafts to hyper consumerism. As a way to honor gentler ways of working with the Earth, Tsai collaborates with craftswomen from Indonesia and Mongolia to create a body of woven and sewn mandalas. Ndewa & Hamanangu, is a series of ikat textiles made with a young weaver Nency Dwi Ratna from the island of Sumba in Indonesia through the support of curator Alia Swastika. For this ten-month project, the weaver closely followed traditional methods passed down through her mother. As a tribute to the tradition, hand-spun yarn from locally sourced cotton and plant based-dye from hand-picked native plants took the form of a local totem ‘lobster’ that symbolizes re-generation. Every step of the preparation follows the natural rhythms of the land. What seems to be mundane labor manifests into sacred geometries representing the interdependence of micro and macro cosmologies.

At Taichung National Theater’s Art Corner, Tsai will create site-specific drawings that fills the seven by six meter large window panels of the opera house with rice paper painted with natural pigments made from vegetable dye mixed with crushed shell powder. As a durational performance, she will write the Heart Sutra on the drawing.The entire performance will be documented and published online. Additional drawings, using pigment extracts from minerals found in the cave paintings along the trade routes where Heart Sutra travelled through from India to East Asia during the Tang Dynasty, will also be exhibited at the main space.

A publication in collaboration with Zolo Press based in Brussels & Mexico City will be released in July 2021.

Songs We Carry

Songs We Carry, A solo exhibition by Charwei Tsai – Mexico City

Songs We Carry
A solo exhibition by Charwei Tsai
Curated by Jo Ying Peng
8 May ~ 13 June 2021
Vernacular Institute, Mexico City

Songs We Carry is a project by Taiwanese artist Charwei Tsai made in collaboration with Tibetan filmmaker Tsering Tashi Gyalthang. It is composed of the series of videos Songs of Chuchepati Camp (2017), Songs of the Migrant Workers of Kaohsiung Harbor (2018) and Hear Her Singing (2017) that has been recomposed into a site-specific installation. The project takes the universality of song, in times of tragedy or jubilation, in poverty or wealth, to create an open platform for understanding the collective struggle, resistance and hope behind the voices. Showcasing three vastly different human conditions in the face of global uncertainties, together the three works encompass Tsai and Gyalthang’s interest in the collected songs of people whose voices are often unheard.

Songs of Chuchepati Camp depicts the state of mind of the displaced earthquake victims in Kathmandu, Nepal. Songs of the Migrant Workers of Kaohsiung Harbor portrays the loneliness of laborers living on fishing vessels. Drawing on the foundations of care and solidarity for women, Hear Her Singing invited the Refugee Women Drama Group to sing their chosen songs. These personal and powerful songs include religious, political and pop styles as well as original material, as dedications to the struggle of women in Yarl’s Wood detainees and asylum seekers in the UK.

Often incorporating geographical, social and spiritual motifs into her works, Tsai’s practice is a highly personal exploration of universal themes and is concerned with shared experiences of economically disadvantaged groups from different communities. Influenced by the philosophy of Tantric Buddhism, “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form” is positioned as a discursive concept in her work, in which Tsai meditates on the complexities among cultural beliefs, spirituality, and transience.

Whirling Natural Pigment Series

We Came Whirling Out of Nothingness XII, 2021 – Natural mineral pigments, watercolor and ink on linen

We Came Whirling Out of Nothingness XII, 2021
Natural mineral pigments, watercolor and ink on linen
76x76cm to 90x90cm

“We Came Whirling Out of Nothingness XII” is a series of new paintings where Tsai paints circular forms with natural pigments extracted from minerals, such as malachite 石綠, cinnabar 硃砂, agate 瑪瑙, and shell powder, then writes sutras in Chinese, as well as various mantras in Tibetan on them. The same pigments were used in cave paintings across Central Asia along the Silk Road, where the Buddhist sutras travelled through since the 5th century, and manifested from sanskrit into many languages before reaching East Asia. Many of the minerals were extracted traditionally for medicinal purposes. This series of work is dedicated to all the

lives lost during the pandemic years. The text written on this work is Samantabhadra’s King of Aspiration Prayer 普賢行願品 and is dedicated to all the victims of the recent pandemic and wars.

The Eye is the First Circle

The Eye is the First Circle – A solo exhibition by Charwei Tsai, LA, USA

The Eye is the First Circle
A solo exhibition by Charwei Tsai
Curated by Haema Sivanesan
21 November 2021 ~ 6 March 2022
Philosophical Research Society Library
Los Angeles, US

Press release:

The Philosophical Research Society (PRS) is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Los Angeles by internationally acclaimed visual artist, Charwei Tsai (Taiwan), The Eye is the First Circle.

The Eye is the First Circle features new works based on the artist’s research conducted at the PRS Library in 2019 on the mandala and its relationship to practices of pilgrimage. Tsai utilized Manly Palmer Hall’s collection of tantric buddhist texts and artwork, and reflected on his writings on the thousand year old rituals and traditions at Koyasan tracing his own steps during her pilgrimage to Mount Koya, Japan.

Taking its title from the opening sentence of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay on spiritual growth Circles (1841), Tsai explores how artistic research coordinating with everyday interactions in life and nature are experienced as opportunities for personal growth and transformation, where the world itself is regarded as the manifestation of divine power.

The exhibition consists of a series of inter-connected bodies of work that explore the idea of the mandala, often described as a ritual circle. In Buddhism, a mandala is a visual tool or technology of meditative Awakening; the visual representation of a spatial field of enlightened activity. Accordingly, the central installation of the exhibition is an installation made of mirrors and ashes titled The Womb and The Diamond – Seed Syllables (2021) referring to two important mandalas in the tantric buddhist tradition Shingon. This installation depicts ten Sanskrit characters, the bija mantras or “sound bodies” of the deities that comprise these two mandalas. This key work in the exhibition is inspired in part by Manly Hall’s essays “Koyasan–Sanctuary of Esoteric Buddhism” and “The Four Seasons of the Spirit.”

A series of five scroll paintings elaborate on this theme, invoking the Five Tathagatas or buddha principles that aid in transforming afflictive emotions into wisdom. Set among these scrolls are beautiful scripted shells and wooden blocks, along with a program of video works that elaborate on the artist’s engagement with tantra. A selection of relevant books and articles from the PRS Library collection provide insight into the artist’s research and background context for these works. Taken together, the exhibition transforms the space of the PRS Library into a mandala.

Tsai reflects on her inspiration for this exhibition, “I happened to visit the PRS Library in Los Angeles just after my first journey to Mount Koya in 2019. I discovered its tremendous archive consisting of journals written about Mount Koya and its esoteric tradition by the late founder of the library, Manly Hall. The articles were written mainly around the 1960’s and 1970’s, after he took multiple trips there. Hall’s logical, practical, and non-mystical analysis of this esoteric tradition has set it apart from a more religious approach. Later, inspired by Hall’s essay, The Four Seasons of the Spirit, (1965) I set out to visit Mount Koya again. Almost everything that he had described in his writings, including a small cable car that one must take to reach the mountain top and the map of the main temple complex has remained the same. The specific rituals and ceremonies corresponding to each season have also continued to be practiced since 1200 years ago. By having his words accompany me on my trip, it became a pilgrimage within a pilgrimage.”

A new publication on the artist’s recent work, The Womb & The Diamond (Taiwan: Live Forever Foundation, 2021) will be available at the PRS Bookstore.

The Philosophical Research Societyis a Los Angeles-based, nonprofit institution founded in 1934 by scholar and prolific author Manly Palmer Hall as a repository of multicultural wisdom sources and a center of learning. With a campus designed by architect Robert Stacy-Judd and later designated a historical-cultural site by the city of Los Angeles, PRS is “dedicated to the ensoulment of all arts, sciences, and crafts.”

Mindfulness

Mindfulness – Organized by Glint – Piknic, Seoul, South Korea

Mindfulness
Organized by Glint
Piknic, Seoul, South Korea
24 April ~ 27 September 2020

Exhibiting work: Bardo, 2017

Exhibiting artists: Charwei Tsai, David Lynch + Tête-à-Tête, Fabrikr, Jawshing Arthur Liou, Miyajima Tatsuo, OMA Space, PARK SEO-BO + 1OF0, Plastique Fantastique + Marco Barotti Seungmo Seo

Supported by Stella McCartney, Japan Foundation, Gallery Baton, Jikji Soft

*Mindfulness – Organized by Glint – Piknic, Seoul, South Korea*

The concept of mindfulness is rooted in Buddhism and other ancient Asian religions and philosophies. In recent years, however, it has been newly recognized for its value as a form of medical therapy irrespective of religion, and a trend has emerged of societies more actively adopting its effectiveness the more they develop as cultures. The choice of “mindfulness” as a term instead of “meditation” signifies a psychological process in which attention is focused on our present state, without the intrusion of judgment. Training ourselves to see ourselves exactly as we are plays an important role in alleviating many of the different issues we experience in the contemporary era—including depression, anxiety, short attention spans, and addiction—while also helping to increase our sense of life satisfaction and happiness and enhance our powers of judgment and creativity.

Exhibiting work: Bardo, 2017

Bardo is a video installation by Charwei Tsai in collaboration with Tibetan filmmaker Tsering Tashi Gyalthang. The video work was inspired by the Tibetan belief in the journey of the consciousness after death and is accompanied by a narration that elucidates the study of death and the sublimity of life.