We Can (Not) See the Void
Visual Machine
Water Lines
About
We Can (Not) See the Void
2025 - Ongoing
This project investigates how damaged and illegible Buddhist sculptures at the Shengguo Temple ruins on Fenghuang Mountain become sites where historical knowledge, sensory experience, and absence converge.
Drawing on archaeological methodologies such as textual research, iconology, and typological study. The artist conducted field research at the site, collecting naturally formed crystallines from the figures' cracks, overlaying archival maps with modern surveys, and layering research texts, iconographic references, and photographs back onto the ruins themselves. It reveals is the shape of absence itself: not a restoration of what was lost, but a sharpened attention to the gap between what remains and what can no longer be seen, and the quiet insistence that the void, too, carries meaning.
Drawing on archaeological methodologies such as textual research, iconology, and typological study. The artist conducted field research at the site, collecting naturally formed crystallines from the figures' cracks, overlaying archival maps with modern surveys, and layering research texts, iconographic references, and photographs back onto the ruins themselves. It reveals is the shape of absence itself: not a restoration of what was lost, but a sharpened attention to the gap between what remains and what can no longer be seen, and the quiet insistence that the void, too, carries meaning.