The Dust
2021Instruments of ritual echo through a deserted Tibetan landscape, while Buddhist chants wash over water-powered prayer wheels and the wreckages of industrial machinery. In The Dust, Tianzhuo Chen reveals a world in disorder where objects and ceremonial instruments are linked by absurd logics of chaos and creation. Inspired by the funeral ritual of the sky burial, where the deceased is left in the open air to decompose and be scavenged by vultures, the installation maps the passage from death to rebirth in a world without humans. Beginning with water and mud and ending in the sky, blown about by mountain winds, Tianzhuo weaves together Buddhist cosmology, corporate visual language, and nightlife hedonism to question the fragility and absurdity of contemporary life and its systems of belief.
Installation · Installation