Youwei Cheng
Tathāgata as Method: The Ontological Move Towards Contemporary Buddhist Art

MRes

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Summary

This practice-based research departs from my thesis, Tathāgata as Method: The Ontological Move Towards Contemporary Buddhist Art, which discusses the concept of “Buddhist Art” and the issues surrounding it. It imbues the social, philosophical, artistic and Buddhist theories associated with “Tathāgata”, a concept throughout the chapters as well as studio practice. Inasmuch as “Tathāgata” is the thusness/ suchness for one to see/be something as it is: grasping reality. The endeavours of deploying this hidden concept at play, while only explained in conclusion, is the necessity in the application and art practice (exemplifications).

Interwoven into the theoretical framework, this practice-based research registers with the apprehension of Buddhist thoughts in the plural modes of self and others, social formation, Fluxus group, contemporaneity, and lineage transmission. On the one hand, this body of work aims to frame the theoretical contexts that are nondual, a bridged relationality (namely, by not comparing the Western and Eastern thoughts, but reciprocally in correspondence to each other); on the other hand, in parallel with one’s own artistic practice within and delegating conversations across implicated histories.

This thesis distributes three chapters into two sections: theoretical foundation and personal artistic contemplations. The first chapter introduces the fundamental Buddhist thoughts and how they chime with social, philosophical and artistic underpinnings. The second chapter extends the framework for a discursive space which centres around the relationship between what is contemporary art, the philosophy of life and“Buddhist Art”. The last section, chapter three and conclusion present a collection of personal artistic practice in juxtaposition to previously encapsulated theories. It draws upon how one’s personal art practice and research come into being with the reciprocal contexts and references. The thesis concludes with a commentary on how this body of work applies and exemplifies “Tathāgata” can be the method for Buddhist art practice and theory.

Keywords: Lineage, Buddhism, Nonduality, Reciprocality, Being, Relationality

Thesis full-text soon available at: https://www.researchgate.net/p...

Additional info

The key method to investigate “Buddhist Art” is “Tathāgata”, it lurks upon as if it is a continuous river. This river never intends to reflect the moon, and the moon is so. Yet it points at the moon. This moon is the various modes of knowledge production throughout the thesis, the making of “Buddhist Art”, and together they exemplify the state of this river, the method of “Tathāgata”.

“Tathāgata”, as a method that encapsulates the term “Buddhist Art”, is of lively becoming, regardless of the temporal and local. It is of a universal vehicle and an ontological“being” with the autonomous: the flowing state of contemporary translatability, as well as the way to wrestle with life and art, self and other. Through the mediation of “Tathāgata”, the analysis and application of “Buddhist Art” unfolds the similitude between art, life, Philosophy and Buddhism as a whole.

The term“Tathāgata”(Chinese:如來/Tibetan: དེ་བཞིན་གཤེགས་པ), means the thusness /suchness in spite of things may come and/or go. It is ungraspable physically, nor is it effable; it is the nature of life and reality we dwell in by becoming with. Where “Tathāgata” departs is not against descriptions or explanation, it foretells a “to be/become one with” precision that is “intuitive” and aligns one’s consciousness and unconsciousness.

Artist Bio

Mahxium Ogyen Chung (Youwei Cheng) is a London-based artist, writer and filmmaker, born in Dêqên Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan. Mahxium’s practice shifts back and forth between poetry, sculpture, installation, performance and moving image, through which he focuses on the translatability within Buddhist philosophy and Contemporary art context, as well as the comparative studies of Mahayana and Continental philosophy. Each translation is an approximation to retrace past events: a walk, a glimpse, a touch, a situation, and an oversight. The events invite him to describe his practice as a form of object-making and weighing, caught between a deathless artefact and a lively nothingness.

He has exhibited his artworks both in Europe and China, including group shows at Beijing Shijia Hutong Museum, Beijing Gallery Weekend 798, Shanghai Exhibition Center, Cooke Latham Gallery, Room 22 Brussels, London Cinema Museum, and others. In the meantime, his academic support and press release have been commissioned for Earthly Elegy (2023) at Beijing Gallery Weekend, Mantianyou (2022) at SHANGZUN Gallery, and many others.