RUIZHI LIU
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
08: The Eighteen Arhats｜Image of Human Beings 2019
The advent of Buddha originated from his gradual realization of human nature — from his meditation under the Bodhi tree as Sakyamuni to his attainment of enlightenment as the Buddha. As such, there is no essential difference between the Buddha and man. Buddha is not a god but an enlightened man who has a keen insight into everything in the universe and has achieved Nirvana after finding a way to escape from the cycle of birth and rebirth. Thus, Buddha is fundamentally a human being.
That is why I chose Buddha in my second project to articulate the “image of human beings” noted in the Diamond Sutra. To that end, I selected the eighteen disciples of Sakyamuni. Arhats are persons who have understood and accepted Buddha’s teaching, attained the ways to escape from the cycle of birth and rebirth, and headed towards the Nirvana of eternal deliverance from afflictions. Arhats depicted in the project have different facial expressions, indicating that the Buddha himself has various emotions. As it is said that both a smiling expression or a face of glaring eyes can be used, as commensurate, to enlighten the worldly beings. Thus, a man will be able to select the emotion he wants to convey after becoming a Buddha.
In this project, I used a film camera to take macro shots of the eighteen arhats carved from peach pits, and then printed the intermediate negatives in enlarged forms. After that, I employed the Kallitype process to sharpen the details and expressions of the eighteen arhats. The making processes of the project are utilized to showcase my understanding of the “image of human beings”.