Incarnation, 2016–2020

Launched in early 2016, this project covers more than 220 temples, cemeteries, public gardens, and amusement parks featuring the statues of deities created by the Han people in Taiwan. Fascinated by the way in which belief systems operate, the artist photographed these sites intensively, and spent over one year and a half for each section.

If we compare a colossal statue of deity to a supercomputer, small statues would be laptops. A computer wields no magic power if it is disconnected from the server. The consecration is to a statue what the password is to logging onto a computer. To be fficacious, the incarnations must connect themselves with the host deity. The increase of a deity’s supernatural power bears comparison with the upgrading of a computer’s software. The position of a temple keeper closely resembles that of a computer engineer if we construe a temple as an omnipotent computer […] However, these represented forms are every bit as illusory as dreams and bubbles, since emptiness is the nature of tattva (i.e. thatness, or ultimate reality). […] One who clings tenaciously to these empty forms will become disoriented in the eon of Sam. sa- ra (i.e. transmigration) from which escape is nowhere on the horizon.