Flesh & Spirit

The Impermanence of Body

After visiting Dunhuang and studying Buddhist narratives, I realized that Buddhism, Christianity, and Greek mythology all view physical suffering as a path to spiritual sublimation. To explore this, I placed dough sculptures outdoors in humid environments in Taipei for a month. Like the corpses in the Kusozu (Nine Stages of Decay), they molded and decayed, attracting insects. One day, a head even vanished. Though just flour, this process shockingly mirrored our own mortality: the “precious human body” is ultimately fragile, destined to disintegrate and return to the earth.