{"id":10012,"date":"2018-10-16T13:11:09","date_gmt":"2018-10-16T13:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artjournalstg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=10012"},"modified":"2020-07-24T15:56:07","modified_gmt":"2020-07-24T15:56:07","slug":"the-buddhist-resistance-of-zhang-huans-pagoda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?p=10012","title":{"rendered":"The Buddhist Resistance of Zhang Huan’s Pagoda<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

On May 12, 2008, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit a mountainous region of Sichuan Province, China, with its epicenter in Wenchuan County. The human toll, as offered by the official information source of the People\u2019s Republic of China, was 87,150 dead and 17,923 missing, with an estimated 5,000 students losing their lives in the ruins of poorly constructed schools.1<\/a><\/sup> Given China\u2019s one-child policy at that time, the loss of an only son or daughter was particularly devastating for parents who were forbidden by the state to publicly mourn these deaths.2<\/a><\/sup> The fallout from the Wenchuan earthquake\u2014not only a natural disaster, but also one involving issues of human rights, government corruption, and silent outrage at the death of innocents\u2014provides necessary cultural context for Pagoda<\/em> (2009), a Buddhism-inspired sculpture by Zhang Huan that takes the form of a commemorative building for the remains of holy beings.<\/p>\n

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Zhang Huan, Pagoda<\/em>, 2009. Gray brick, steel, taxidermic pig, 264 x 335 in. (670 x 850 cm.). Installation view, Blum and Poe, Los Angeles. Artwork \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio, photograph \u00a9 Joshua White.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An unexpected element of Pagoda<\/em> is the pig that pokes its head from an aperture carved into the massive brick structure. Zhang Huan (b. 1965) has stated that this stuffed pig references an actual farm animal that subsisted for forty-nine days on rainwater and rotten wood in the rubble of the Wenchuan earthquake. The media dubbed this pig Zhu Gangqiang, or Pig Steel-strength, and the public embraced it as a symbol of heroic survival. The unusual juxtaposition of a humble pig with the most sacred of Buddhist buildings thus makes sense: in Zhu Gangqiang\u2019s forty-nine days of survival, Zhang found resonance with the seven weeks of purgatory between death and rebirth in Chinese Buddhism.<\/p>\n

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Zhang Huan, detail of pig in Pagoda<\/em>, 2009. Gray brick, steel, taxidermic pig, 264 x 335 in. (670 x 850 cm.). Artwork \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio, photograph \u00a9 Joshua White.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Zhu Gangqiang\u2019s will to live supports Zhang\u2019s own longstanding self-mythology as an artist\/dragon perpetually striving against social and political currents\u2014not because he is a revolutionary, but because he sees himself as a patriot committed to improving the lives of the Chinese people.3<\/a><\/sup> The development of this self-mythology coincides with the artist\u2019s thirty-year engagement with Buddhist forms and concepts, with Pagoda<\/em> representing the culmination of a longer spiritual journey spanning his folk Buddhist practices of a rural childhood, his formal eight-year study of Zen meditation in New York, and his official ordination as a lay follower of Tibetan Buddhism in 2006.<\/p>\n

While Pagoda<\/em> is driven by the artist\u2019s spiritual beliefs in compassion, impermanence, and interconnectedness, the work is nonetheless restrained by the political narratives that frame the Wenchuan earthquake. By integrating seemingly incompatible categories, such as introspection and spectacle, Pagoda<\/em> presents a dangerous cocktail of religious and political messages in a country whose constitution states that \u201cno one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order.\u201d4<\/a><\/sup>  It would seem that Pagoda<\/em> clearly possesses the potential to \u201cdisrupt public order,\u201d yet authorities allowed its exhibition in China and the United States. Are the religious and political allusions in Zhang\u2019s Pagoda<\/em> so personal and idiosyncratic that they flew under the radar of censorship? Is there a distinction between the art of quiet resistance and that of loud activism? Does spiritual belief have the power to diffuse political commentary? This essay considers these questions by viewing Pagoda<\/em> through three frameworks: the spiritual and the political, resistance and activism, and Buddhist art and the global contemporary.<\/p>\n

The Spiritual and the Political<\/strong><\/p>\n

The well-known fate of Tibetan Buddhism and Falun Gong Buddhism, whose leaders have been exiled to India and the United States, respectively, attest to the harsh persecution faced by Buddhist groups that threaten the Communist Party.5<\/a><\/sup> Yet an examination of the historical antecedents of Pagoda<\/em> reveals that spirituality and politics have always been present in the form and function of the architectural type to which it refers.<\/p>\n

For instance, the earliest record of a pagoda in East Asia originates with a golden man that appeared in a dream of the Emperor Ming (28\u201375 CE) of the Eastern Han Dynasty of China (25\u2013220 CE). Buddhist-leaning factions at the court convinced the emperor to send emissaries to the western regions of his empire, who returned with news that the golden man was known in India as the Buddha, an enlightened sage from several centuries earlier who had left behind scriptures, relics, and images for the instruction of later generations. The emperor was so pleased by the success of the mission that upon its return from India, he established China\u2019s first Buddhist temple in the capital city of Luoyang. The newly consecrated White Horse Temple also included China\u2019s first official pagoda, a form of commemorative architecture dedicated to housing relics that would become, along with the image hall and the lecture space, one of the primary components of Chinese Buddhist temples.6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

The current pagoda at the White Horse Temple dates from the twelfth century, but its function aligns both with its first-century origins and with Zhang\u2019s contemporary installation.7<\/a><\/sup> That is, the artist\u2019s interest in Pagoda<\/em> is less due to its formal fidelity to a quintessential Chinese type and more in its traditional function as a monument capable of transferring spiritual authority from one region to another. Zhang has acknowledged that Pagoda<\/em> is based on an inspiration sourced far beyond the Chinese world: its long-lost twin is surely the Bawbawgyi Pagoda from the seventh-century Burmese kingdom of Sri Ksetra.8<\/a><\/sup><\/a> And although the silhouettes of the two constructions are nearly identical, the reclaimed gray bricks are specific to the relentless demolition of Shanghai\u2019s premodern neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

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Bawbawgyi Pagoda, seventh century. Brick, 1087 in. (4590 cm.), Sri Ksetra archaeological site near Pyay, Myanmar. Photograph \u00a9 Jakub Halun.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The motif of the taxidermied pig also plays with the historical meaning of relics as \u201cdead bodies, bits of bone or cloth, dirt or fingernails\u2026[that] have discomfited some and consoled many.\u201d9<\/a><\/sup> It is this capacity of relics to disgust and to comfort that sheds light on their ontology as both dead and alive, an ambiguous status that humans typically fear in the remains of other humans\u2014not in the leftover parts of animals. For Zhu Gangqiang to become a relic, then, the pig needed to become human.<\/p>\n

The recent controversy regarding the use of animals at the Guggenheim exhibition Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World<\/em> highlights deep fissures in cultural attitudes toward the humane in contemporary Chinese art.10<\/a><\/sup> The legal protection of animals is nonexistent in China, and Western critics often regard the mistreatment of animals in contemporary Chinese art as emblematic of human rights violations in China more generally. This spotlight on the proper treatment of living beings, both human and animal, became especially intense following the tragedy of the Wenchuan earthquake and the international attention on China leading up to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. Since authorities eagerly sought distractions from a natural disaster worsened by their own neglect, Zhu Gangqiang quickly became a national symbol of hope and a full-blown celebrity.<\/p>\n

The anthropomorphizing of Zhu Gangqiang increased considerably when Zhang expressed his desire to adopt the pig, setting off a public debate of whether Zhu Gangqiang was a ward of the farmer, the local community, or the state. Ultimately, the farmer was allowed to sell the pig to the artist in exchange for a new house. Shortly thereafter, Zhu Gangqiang quickly transformed from earthquake survivor to art world superstar.<\/p>\n

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Zhang Huan, Zhu Gangqiang<\/em>, 2009. 171 5\/8 x 255 7\/8 x 522 1\/16 in. (436 x 650 x 1326 cm.). Oxford Sandy pigs, live-streaming video. Installation view, White Cube: Mason’s Yard, London. Artwork \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio, photograph \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This transformation began with the pig\u2019s eponymous exhibit, Zhu Gang Qiang<\/em>, at White Cube Mason\u2019s Yard (September\u2013October 2009). For several weeks, the Chinese pig appeared in a projected live video feed from Shanghai, while his British girlfriend Oxford Flower (of the rare Oxford Sandy and Black breed) roamed the actual space of the London gallery.11<\/a><\/sup> The constant surveillance of Zhu Gangqiang introduced the pig, already famous in China, to an international audience somewhat perplexed by the nonspectacular visuals of his daily routine.12<\/a><\/sup> Since British regulations prevented a live Chinese pig from roaming the semipublic space of an art gallery, Zhang constructed an internet romance between the boar in Shanghai and the sow in London that was recorded as a text dialogue in the accompanying catalogue. A particularly poignant exchange between the two lovers relates to the revelation that Oxford Flower had a child from a previous union:<\/p>\n

Flower: I already have a child. Do you mind? When I was in high school. I didn\u2019t know any better. I fell for this hot guy. He was the captain of the football team. I ended up having his kid. Later he went to play for Madrid Real and now he\u2019s a huge star. He left me and his kid behind. You\u2019re a real man. You have a sense of family.<\/p>\n

Gangqiang: Of course, I mind! I didn\u2019t plant those seeds!! Send me a photo of your kid. I\u2019ll take a look.<\/p>\n

Gangqiang: \u2026Well, the child does look really obedient.<\/p>\n

Flower: He looks a little like you.<\/p>\n

Gangqiang: If people didn\u2019t know, they might think he was my own child. Not bad.13<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sadly, Zhu Gangqiang died of unspecified complications shortly after the White Cube exhibition, but his spirit lived on in the artist\u2019s next project as the heart of Pagoda<\/em> and its display in two major exhibitions: Dawn of Time<\/em> at the Shanghai Art Museum (February 2010) and 49 Days<\/em> at Blum and Poe, Los Angeles (May\u2013July 2011).<\/p>\n

Dawn of Time<\/em> successfully opened in 2010 after Chinese officials had blocked it without explanation in 2008, and it reads as a sly annotation on the idiosyncrasies of state power.14<\/a><\/sup> The exhibition was both small and epic, comprising five large works juxtaposed in compelling pairs. In the first room, Pagoda<\/em> was put into dialogue with Hero #1<\/em> (2009), a thirty-two-foot-tall sculpture of a hundred cowhides assembled over an armature of steel, wood, and foam, from which a child\u2019s head emerged through layers of skin and hooves. Placed face-to-face, the child in Hero #1<\/em> amplifies the Buddhist symbolism of the pig in Pagoda<\/em> to illustrate that humans and animals are subject to the same laws of existence.15<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

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Zhang Huan, Hero No. 1<\/em>, 2009. Cow skin, steel, wood, and polystyrene foam, 193 x 368 x 252 in. (490 x 980 x 640 cm.). Artwork \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio, photograph \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Zhang Huan, Hero No. 1<\/em>, 2009. Cow skin, steel, wood, and polystyrene foam, 193 x 368 x 252 in. (490 x 980 x 640 cm.). Installation view, Shanghai Art Museum. Artwork \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio, photograph \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a second room, a related conversation developed between Dawn of Time<\/em> (2009), an installation of bricks streaming from a decrepit truck bed, and an ash painting entitled Great Leap Forward \u2013 Canal Building<\/em> (2007) on the opposite wall. The old bricks tumbling from the truck facing a monumental image of a famous state project created a powerful cyclical narrative of destruction and construction, construction and destruction. Zhang\u2019s ash paintings are among the most compelling expressions of his religious sincerity and artistic vision, since they are made through the meticulous application of incense ash gathered from local temples that is then sorted into tonal gradations. The selection of this particular image also demonstrates the artist\u2019s awareness of the historical afterlife of images and their dynamic circulation. The actual ash painting was completed in 2007, but the image is based on a historical photograph from the Great Leap Forward (1958\u20131961) that was widely disseminated a decade later as propaganda for the Cultural Revolution (1966\u20131976). And just as the collected incense ash represents the hopes of countless worshippers, the hundreds of faceless figures in Great Leap Forward <\/em>represent the unknown human toll of misguided state projects.16<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

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Zhang Huan, Dawn of Time<\/em>, 2009. Steel dump-bed, wood, gray brick, and taxidermic foal, 173 x 709 x 236 in. (490 x 980 x 640 cm.). Installation view, Shanghai Art Museum. Artwork \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio, photograph \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The political undertones of Dawn of Time<\/em> were rendered more explicitly religious in 49 Days<\/em>, a 2011 exhibition at Blum and Poe, where Pagoda<\/em> was exhibited alongside a set of eleven sculptures made from similar gray bricks. These comprised six pigs (49 Days #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #11<\/em>) and five skulls (49 Days #6, #7, #8, #9 #10<\/em>) that corresponded with the expanded iconography of purgatory in medieval China (fourth to tenth centuries). Consequently, the presence of Pagoda<\/em> in 49 Days<\/em> reflects a Chinese Buddhist view of death and rebirth in which ten of the brick sculptures would accord with the Ten Kings that presided over the courts of purgatory at seven-day intervals.17<\/a><\/sup> However, the eleventh brick sculpture would represent the Bodhisattva Ksitigharba, an important addition to the iconography of the Ten Kings at the height of their cult during the ninth and tenth centuries.18<\/a><\/sup> Ksitigharba, as ultimate savior, had the power to pardon the deceased from the most unfavorable judicial outcomes and rebirths. Thus, the eleven brick pigs and skulls of Zhang\u2019s 49 Days<\/em>, like the Ten Kings and Ksitigharba of medieval China, provide an expanded context for interpreting Pagoda<\/em> that is more spiritual than political.19<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

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Zhang Huan, 49 Days No. 1<\/em>, 2011. Gray brick and steel, 135 7\/8 x 98 3\/8 x 131 7\/8 in. (345 x 250 x 335 cm.); 49 Days No. 10<\/em>, 2011. Gray brick and steel, 79 7\/8 x 80 3\/8 x 7 in. (203 x 204 x 18 cm.); and 49 Days No. 3<\/em>, 2011. Gray brick and steel, 2011, 28 3\/8 x 139 3\/4 x 79 1\/2 in. (72 x 355 x 202 cm.). Installation view, Blum and Poe, Los Angeles (artwork \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio, photograph \u00a9 Joshua White).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Ten Kings of Hell with Ksitigharba<\/em>, tenth century. Ink and colors on silk, 36 x 26 in. (91 x 65.5 cm.). Stein Collection OA 1919.1-1.023, British Museum. Artwork \u00a9 Trustees of the British Museum.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Resistance and Activism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pagoda<\/em> commemorates the body parts of the \u201cspecial dead,\u201d as Peter Brown has memorably described the remains of deceased saints.20<\/a><\/sup> And the placement of the humble pig in a place reserved for the most sacred of relics is neither lighthearted nor sacrilegious. Rather, it blends the Indian Buddhist respect for all forms of life with a Chinese Marxist understanding of struggle, and stands in distinction to other examples of contemporary Chinese art that take explicit aim at the official failures of the Wenchuan earthquake. By situating a symbol of individual survival (Zhu Gangqiang) within the framework of collective religion (Buddhism), Zhang resists the official narrative of the Wenchuan earthquake in ways different from the activism of Ai Weiwei, in which the celebrity of the artist simultaneously brings attention to and takes attention away from the subject of the outrage itself.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, both artists took great risk in even addressing the Wenchuan earthquake, since engaging with a taboo topic means challenging state narratives put in place to coopt the inception of these challenges. Consider that the official explanation for the deaths of children buried in their schools focused on the intensity of the earthquake, rather than the quality of construction. Pagoda<\/em>, as a structure not only composed of bricks from destroyed buildings, but also one that is continually built and dismantled with each installation, could easily be interpreted as a commentary on this type of corruption\u2014if not for the cover of a parallel Buddhist message related to impermanence. Likewise, by creating a pagoda commemorating the most famous survivor of the earthquake, Zhu Gangqiang, Zhang has essentially designed a funerary monument independent of those maintained by the state.<\/p>\n

The moral ambiguity of Pagoda<\/em> contrasts with Ai Weiwei\u2019s fury at the student deaths of the Wenchuan earthquake and his outspoken criticism of the Communist Party, as demonstrated in his Remembering<\/em> (2009).21<\/a><\/sup> The viewer approached this thousand-square-meter installation at the Haus der Kunst in Munich to find the infamous Nazi art temple adorned with a new skin. Upon closer inspection, the tarp-like fa\u00e7ade revealed itself to be a mosaic of nine thousand children\u2019s backpacks announcing in incongruously cheerful red, blue, green, yellow, and white that \u201cshe lived open-heartedly [happily] in this world for seven years\u201d (ta zai zheige shijieshang kaixindi shenghuoguo qinian <\/em>\u5979\u5728\u8fd9\u4e2a\u4e16\u754c\u4e0a\u5f00\u5fc3\u5730\u751f\u6d3b\u8fc7\u4e03\u5e74).<\/p>\n

\"\"
Ai Weiwei, Remembering<\/em>, 2009. Backpacks and metal armature, 364 x 4175 x 4 in. (925 x 10605 x 10 cm.). Installation view, Haus der Kunst, Munich. Artwork \u00a9 Ai Weiwei Studio, photograph \u00a9 Ai Weiwei Studio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ai Weiwei quotes a mother grieving for a daughter lost in the Wenchuan earthquake through the colors of a child’s toy blocks and the composition of a Cultural Revolution slogan. What is more of a cover-up: the new fa\u00e7ade of the Haus der Kunst, or the deliberate concealment of the deaths of thousands of children? Notably, the character for \u201copen\u201d (kai<\/em> \u5f00) occupies the central spot in the fifteen character statement, and frames the museum entrance as a visual and verbal pun that imposes the passing of the child onto the visitor entering or exiting the building.22<\/a><\/sup> Moreover, the choice of white as the background color for this central character not only outlines the museum entrance with its vertical and horizontal components; it also references the Chinese folk religious association of white with death. Yet the mournfulness of Remembering<\/em> is entirely political, and contrasts with the contemplative resistance of Pagoda<\/em>.23<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

\"\"
Ai Weiwei, detail of “kai” in Remembering<\/em>, 2009. Backpacks and metal armature, 364 x 4175 x 4 in. (925 x 10605 x 10 cm.). Installation view, Haus der Kunst, Munich. Artwork \u00a9 Ai Weiwei Studio, photograph \u00a9 Ai Weiwei Studio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The commentary of Pagoda<\/em> extends beyond a general observation of social ills\u2014in a tenor deemed politically acceptable by Chinese authorities\u2014and enters the controversial terrain of critically assessing state policies and decisions. In this sense, it differs from Zhang\u2019s other Buddhism-inspired work: his performances of mental and physical discipline in Beijing from 1993 to 1998, his explorations of cultural alienation after his move to New York in 1998, and his monumental object-based work on themes of history and religion upon his return to Shanghai in 2006. Consider Zhang\u2019s early performance, 12 Square Meters<\/em> (1994), when on a steaming summer day, the artist sat motionless for one hour in a reeking public toilet that he used daily with hundreds of other people in Beijing\u2019s East Village.<\/p>\n

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Zhang Huan, 12 Square Meters<\/em>, 1994. Performance, Beijing. Artwork \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio, photograph \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If performance art negotiates the personal body and the public ruptures it creates, 12 Square Meters<\/em> inscribes the human predicaments stemming from China\u2019s headlong development onto the skin of the artist.24<\/a><\/sup> As he recalled in a 1999 interview,<\/p>\n

I just felt that everything began to vanish from my sight. Life seemed to be leaving me far in the distance. I had no concrete thought\u2014I could only feel my body, more and more flies landing and crawling over my nose, eyes, lips, ears, forehead, every part of me. I could feel them eating the liquid on my body. Some were stuck but did not stop eating\u2014the very concept of life was then for me the simple experience of the body.25<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Endurance was an exercise in consciousness, in which one transcended the body through a complete awareness of it as an experience. By extension, the viewer looks at Rong Rong\u2019s now-iconic photographs of 12 Square Meters<\/em> from the perspective of Zhang\u2019s mind\u2019s eye.26<\/a><\/sup> Not unlike the operations inherent in traditional Buddhist art, the subject is expected to assume the meditative state represented in the object. Associations with Buddhist sculpture are equally present in the artist\u2019s posture and adornment. Zhang sits with both legs pendant in a pose associated with a specific image type named the King Udayana Buddha, after a sixth-century BCE Indian ruler that carved a likeness of the Buddha to always keep him present. Notably, the King Udayana Buddha is among the most famous image types from the UNESCO World Heritage Centre of Longmen, near Zhang\u2019s hometown of Anyang in Henan Province.27<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Zhang\u2019s nearly naked figure is also adorned in a manner that recalls the iconography of bejeweled Buddhist divinities. His right arm and hand bear an Indian style bracelet and ring, and his chiseled muscles glisten beneath honey and fish oil, a concoction improvised from common ingredients found in his kitchen. Critical analyses of 12 Square Meters<\/em> typically focus on the pungent, sticky nature of this liquid to emphasize the artist\u2019s fortitude, but less noted is the visual function of this liquid upon his physique: one that turns sweat into the gilded surface of a Buddha statue.<\/p>\n

Aspects of Buddhist experience also appear in Zhang\u2019s first commissioned performance in the United States, Pilgrimage \u2013 Wind and Water in New York <\/em>(1998). As part of Inside Out: New Chinese Art<\/em> at the Asia Society and P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center (September 1998\u2013January 1999), Pilgrimage<\/em> was presented in the newly renovated courtyard of P.S. 1 (now MoMA PS1) with a reproduction Ming-dynasty daybed covered in a slab of ice. Purebred dogs of various breeds were tied to the bed, and their loud barks competed with the solemn sounds of Tibetan prayer chants piped into the space. The naked artist entered the courtyard by prostrating himself in the Tibetan fashion by kneeling and then fully extending his torso until his face touched the ground. He slowly repeated the gesture, inching his way to the daybed like a human caterpillar, until he had finally stretched himself face down on the ice. He lay there for nearly ten minutes until the cold became unbearable, and then sat upright to face the audience.28<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

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Zhang Huan, Pilgrimage – Wind and Water in New York<\/em>, 1998. Performance, New York. Artwork \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio, photograph \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to Zhang, Pilgrimage<\/em> was inspired in part by the artist\u2019s dismay at the coldness of New Yorkers, and by his amazement that, in America, dogs were treated better than homeless people. As in 12 Square Meters<\/em>, the artist uses his body and various multisensory props to evoke meditative discipline. However, the Buddhist references in Pilgrimage <\/em>are directed less at the miscarriages of Chinese society and more at undermining the myths of the West. Pilgrimage<\/em> exposes exoticism as multilateral by superimposing the Western fantasy of Tibet as a Shangri-la with the Chinese obsession with Tibet as a spiritual source. Zhang aims to undercut the Western fascination with artists under authoritarian regimes\u2014epitomized by the artist himself\u2014by critiquing the limits of Western creative autonomy.<\/p>\n

In 2006, Zhang returned to China as a global art star. He purchased a studio that spanned a Shanghai city block, and hired over one hundred assistants to execute his projects. Two years later, he officially become a lay follower of Tibetan Buddhism. The stage was set for the contemporary realization of Buddhist art on a grand scale: Berlin Buddha<\/em> (2007), which combines Zhang Huan\u2019s earlier interest in duration with a new concern for materiality and labor.29<\/a><\/sup> On one side of the gallery, a Buddha made of incense ash slowly disintegrates, while on the other side, its aluminum sculptural mold waits to give birth to another ash sculpture.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Zhang Huan, Berlin Buddha, 2007. Ash, iron, and aluminum, 146 x 114 x 102 in. (370 x 290 x 260 cm.). Artwork \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio, photograph \u00a9 Zhang Huan Studio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The hollow aluminum Buddha measures twelve feet high and nine-and-a-half feet wide, and is large enough to accommodate a dozen people. Several assistants are needed to pack eight tons of ash into every crevice of the Buddha\u2019s body, arms, fingers, head, and face. Yet incense cannot be durably cast, and Zhang embraces the fleeting nature of the material through the installation\u2019s formal and conceptual underpinnings. Iron poles and mask buttress the Buddha\u2019s head as an object of beauty in its own right, while the Buddha\u2019s unsupported right hand is allowed to collapse under its own weight in the manner of ancient stone sculpture. Gravity and human vibrations take their relentless toll on the rest of the crumbling body, until, at the end of the exhibition, a group of participants yank at the supports until the head crashes down in a thick cloud of dust.30<\/a><\/sup> Berlin Buddha<\/em> invokes both entropy and samsara: ashes to ashes in a Buddhist sense, with the incense eventually remolded into future incarnations, such as Taipei Buddha<\/em> (2010) and Sydney Buddha<\/em> (2015).<\/p>\n