Renming Tan

The installation work presents an approach of rereading and reconstruction of Buddhism hell mythology in accordance with the ideology mused from Ryunosuke Akutagawa. The novels exemplified by Hell Screen and The Spider’s Thread form the pivotal roles which also become the agencies for a self-investigation of my obsession of image of abjection and horror. Herein, each component depicts a perspective to reread the hell image by either or not borrowing the image of my subject as if I am the protagonist in Akutagawa’s novels who desires the grotesque images for the art creation. Therein, art becomes a sublimated reason for the sinister pursuit of abjection as if how hell becomes a significant constitutive element in the sacred belief of oriental Buddhism. Afterward, can the image of hell resolved from such rereading process be exemplified as a platform where the struggles between sinisterness and salvation, between desublimated and the sublimated could be reconceived and intertwined.