Charwei Tsai – Page 8

The Power of Intention

The Power of Intention: Reinventing the (Prayer) Wheel - Rubin Museum of Art, New York, US, 2019

The Power of Intention: Reinventing the (Prayer) Wheel
Curated by Elena Pakhoutova
Rubin Museum of Art, New York, US
1 March ~ 14 October 2019

Exhibited works:
Spiral Incense Mantra – A Supplication, 2019, Installation
A Supplication, 2019, Drawing
Incense Mantra, 2019, Video

We may not think of intentions as sources of power, but our intentions define the quality of any action. We can use our intentions to empower us to create positive change for ourselves and others. Inspired by Tibetan prayer wheels, The Power of Intention: Reinventing the (Prayer) Wheel brings together select examples of traditional and contemporary art to illuminate the relationship between our intentions, commitments, and actions. Prayer wheels are ritual objects containing thousands, even millions of written prayers and mantras.

The clockwise rotation of the wheels—set in motion by the power of a hand or the elements—is believed to release the positive energy of the prayers into the world.

Taking the Tibetan prayer wheel as a metaphor for the power to create positive change, the exhibition highlights key ideas related to prayer wheels and their processes of creation, activation, and meaning. International artists Monika Bravo, Alexandra Dementieva, Youdhisthir Maharjan, Charwei Tsai, and Scenocosme’s Grégory Lasserre & Anaïs met den Ancxt take the Tibetan prayer wheel on a conceptual spin, and their works manifest in visible and tangible forms the power of intention, commitment, repetition, accumulation, and belief.

As part of her work in The Power of Intention: Reinventing the (Prayer) Wheel, Charwei Tsai wrote the mantras of Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche) on spiral incense custom-made in Taiwan. In accordance with the artist’s wishes for respectful dispersal of the incense, pieces of the incense will be provided to Museum visitors who signed up to receive them following the closure of the exhibition.

Now that the exhibition has closed, those who signed up to receive a piece of the incense will soon be notified with further details about pickup.

THE WHEEL OF INTENTIONS

Empower your own intentions by turning The Wheel of Intentions, an interactive installation in the Museum lobby created by Potion and Ben Rubin, based on a concept by the Rubin Museum. Activate your intentions and reinforce the intentions of others with each turn of the wheel as they are released into the world and see how they travel up the spiral staircase and take visual form within the Power of Intention exhibition.

The Power of Intention: Reinventing the (Prayer) Wheel is supported by Lois and Bob Baylis, Barbara Bowman, the Ellen Bayard Weedon Foundation, the Ministry of Culture (Taiwan) and Taipei Cultural Center in New York, and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.

In Memory of Poet Yu Kwang-Chung (1928-2017)

In Memory of Poet Yu Kwang-Chung (1928-2017), 2018, Exhibition view

Charwei Tsai
In Memory of Poet Yu Kwang-Chung (1928-2017) – Bell Fruit, Mango, Pomegranate, Puli Sugarcane
2018
Watercolor & ink on rice paper
About 180x180cm each drawing

Drawing series created in memory of late poet Yu Kwang-Chung (余光中 1928~2017) who was born in Nanjing and has been fleeing wars since his childhood. He finally settled in Taiwan in 1950 and made his last home in Kaohsiung since 1985. The drawings are inspired by his poetry anthology Pomegranate [安石榴], which celebrates the fruits of Taiwan with a beginner’s mind. It is as if he has tasted them for the very first time.

Special thanks to Tsering Tashi Gyalthang
Photograph courtesy of the artist, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan, and Chen Ching-yang.

Exhibition history:
“Still Waters Run Deep”

Root of Desire

Root of Desire solo exhibition, TKG+, Taipei

Root of Desire Charwei Tsai solo exhibition
8 December 2018 – 20 January 2019
TKG+

Charwei Tsai’s solo exhibition, the Root of Desire, centers around desire and preludes to the classical maieutic discourse of the Vimalakirti Sutra. It is a profound and sophic exploration of the metaphysical troika encompassing her own life, nature, and humanity. This ancient spiritual text is one of the first recorded in Asia that discusses women’s rights and gender equality. When asked “How should one look at a sentient being?” Vimalakirti responded, “the way a wise person looks at the reflection of the moon in water.” The non-duality “propositioned” in the text alludes to equality and sameness. The exhibited works showcase Tsai’s long-term examination of Mahāyānaand Hīnayāna Buddhismand is an experiment in exhibiting both her personal and social practice.

Transcribing the Vimalakirti Sutra, the artist imprints this vessel for emptiness upon her impermanent form until she becomes one with it. It is with this that the artist unveils the exhibition with a video work, Water Moon(2017). Nature as her metaphor, the artist captures the moon’s reflection in a dark pool alluding to the simultaneous existence of reality and illusion or the mundane and the sublime. The exhibition moves on to a personal journey through a vast desert landscape portrayed in the new video installation, Root of Desire(2018). In this work, the artist inscribes a conversation between Vimalakirti and Manjusri that deconstructs desire into rootlessness. As the sand is scattered by the wind, the text also disintegrates. The work articulates the search for desire in its differing manifestations.

In a new series of drawings, “The Goddess” (2018), the artist inscribes a text from the sutra onto drawings of a forest. This excerpt derives from a notable passage in the sutra: a Goddess conducts a gender exchange between herself and a monk to illustrate equality between the sexes. “The Goddess” marks a transition from the more introspective works to the outward-looking projects on social change that mark the artist’s recent works.The artist contemplates nature at this stage to exemplify the Buddhist philosophy of emptiness, which is the experiential understanding that all compounded things disintegrate.

Three videos installations of people forcibly scattered across the corners of this world mark the end of this journey.The three video installations, Songs of Chuchepati Camp, Nepal (2017), Hear Her Singing (2017), and Songs of Kaohsiung Migrant Workers(2018), capture people from all over the world who in face of displacement as a result of social, political, and economic injustice. The artist thus shifts her focus to humanity and collects a series of voices that have been overlooked in this world.Various songs expressing the universal sentiments of the desire for love and the fear for separation are vocalized by earthquake victims from Nepal; female asylum seekers detained in the UK from Iran, India, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Namibia, Sri Lanka, and other locations, as well as Southeast Asian and Africa migrant workers in Kaohsiung. Their voices bridge a connection that transcends race, economics, culture, and religion.Tsai’s creation is redolent with ideas from Buddhist philosophy and her own understanding of life, aspiring to compel the masses and negotiate equilibriums between dichotomous extremes.

The solo exhibition catalogue will be released during the exhibition as well. It will embody interview with Stephanie Rosenthal, director of Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum in Berlin and essay by Tiffany Leung, curator of Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA) in Manchester.

The Goddess & The Monk Series

The Goddess & The Monk Series - 2018 - Watercolor & ink on rice paper

The Goddess & The Monk Series
2018
Watercolor & ink on rice paper

The Goddess is a series of drawings of trees, on which excerpts were written from the chapter in Vimalakirti Sutra where a sex change and a debate on gender equality take place between a monk and a goddess. This is the first time in recorded history in Asia where women’s rights is emphasized in a religious text and in a radical way.

Root of Desire

Root of Desire
2018
HD video, color with sound, 7 minutes 8 seconds
Commissioned by UCLA Confucius Institute for Dunhuang Projected,
China Onscreen Biennial

Root of Desire , 2018 – HD video, color with sound, 7 minutes 8 seconds

Mañjuśrī: What is the root of desire and attachment?
Vimalakīrti: Unreal construction is the root of desire.
Mañjuśrī: What is the root of unreal construction?
Vimalakīrti: False concept is its root.
Mañjuśrī: What is the root of false concept?
Vimalakīrti: Baselessness.
Mañjuśrī: What is the root of baselessness?
Vimalakīrti: Mañjuśrī, when something is baseless, how can it have any root?
Therefore, all things stand on the root which is baseless.

The discourse on the root of desire between Vimalakīrti and Mañjuśrī from the renowned Buddhist text, Vimalakīrti Sutra, inspired me to make this work. It begins in a vast landscape of the Mongolian region of the Gobi Desert. Nothing seems to be alive here except for the elements of fire from the sun, the wind and the earth. The artist enters the frame and inscribes the conversation by heart on the sand. Rays of light radiate through the negative space of each character and slowly uncovers a stainless mirror buried underneath. The scene is overlaid with projections of endless deserts and a figure who appears to be deeply lost from within. When the artist finishes writing and the wind disperses the sand back into the earth and the text disintegrates. The film ends with flower petals thrown into the air in joy as the now empty mirrored surface reveals an open sky.

*Root of Desire* , 2018 – UCLA Confucius Institute for Dunhuang Projected, China Onscreen Biennial

Captions:

Root of Desire, 2018, HD video, color with sound, 7’8”
In collaboration with Khoroldorj Choijoovanchig
Commissioned by UCLA Confucius Institute for Dunhuang Projected, China Onscreen Biennial