LINES —Shi Jin-Hua’s Contemporary Religious Art: Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts

Curator/Chen Hung-Hsing

From ancient times to modern times, the sacredness and grandness of religion have been immortalized through art. However, the “contemporary religious art” is a category of art that does not exist. Does the absence of this category of art symbolize the rise of secular values and the consequential fall of religion? Are the cynicism, hostility and nihilism brought by the critical spirit of artists the reasons behind all these? Or is it just as indicated by many art critics that art has eventually replaced religion and become enshrined by people? Art used to serve religion and, in the contemporary time, art and religion are at two different ends. Once basking in shared glory, do art and religion have to stay in separate paths?

From the black Virgin Mary painting created by Chris Ofili using elephant feces to Maurizio Cattelan’s life-size effigy of Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteor and to the photographs of a Jesus figurine in urine by Andres Serrano.... When religion meets contemporary art, the results are almost all scandalous. The nature of these creations based on religious themes is still the sarcasm and criticism consistent with contemporary art. In this sense, just like current affairs, politics, institutional system and capital market, religion is just one of the targets that art criticizes. There is nothing special or representative about religion in the eyes of contemporary art.

However, what the Lines—Shi Jin-Hua’s Contemporary Religious Art exhibition intends to convey is the right opposite. Different from those works of contemporary art that attack, ridicule or profane religion, the works in this exhibition are all works of “contemporary religious art”, a special category of art that has not existed before. These works are illustrative of perfect combination of religion and art. However, they are not artistic creations based on religious topics or artistic creations serving religion. They are examples of the practice of art as the embodiment of religious beliefs. In other words, art is a religion itself and vice versa. This is what makes the contemporary religious art of Shi Jin-Hua so original.

The works in this exhibition are not works of “Performance Art” or “Conceptual Art” as defined by Western concepts. Nor are they works of happening art, performances or provocative works created to challenge the traditional paradigm of art. They are the results of a contemporary artist’s pondering over the meanings of existence and the sufferings in life. The art of Shi Jin-Hua can be redefined using the concept of “practice” as “the art of practice” or “the art of dharma practitioner”. The concept of “practice” is the core concept of contemporary religious art, by which religion appears as an art and art as the key to the practice of religion. Combined inseparably as one, religion is no longer just a theme of artistic creation while art is no longer just a promoter of religion. The two are merged in daily acts, not the acts of “Performance Art” but the practices of an ascetic-artist, turning all the pains and sufferings into all kinds of “lines” and engrossing himself in activities of artistic creation with one line after another until the end of his life.