This article is from WeChat official account:One (ID: yitiaotv), author: Chen rice paddy, Editor: Chen Zaiwen, the original title: “she made the one weighs about six tons of statues, beautiful and thrilling, but also attracted the Japanese master,” the head of the respondents from the map
In 2019, the artist Hu Junjun began to use dead branches to create Nirvana Buddha.
Last year, she was invited to create a 16.8 meters long, 3.86 meters high, and weighs about 6 tons of Nirvana Buddha, which attracted much attention in an exhibition in Xiamen.
Nirvana painting works
Nirvana is a Buddhist term that means death and death. It is also the ultimate goal of Buddhist practitioners: liberation, freedom, peace, inaction, immortality, immortality.
Hu Junjun from 2015Created with Nirvana Buddha as the subject. In her works, the Buddha often appears in the colorful Chinese landscape scenes with a light posture and peaceful face, breaking people’s stereotypes of religious works.
Hu Junjun’s collection of Buddha statues
Withered Buddha in Mumu Art Museum
In addition to creation, she and her husband Zhang Huan also collected Chinese Northern Dynasty Buddha statues. In 2019, she invited the architect Tadao Ando to design a museum for their collection of Northern Dynasty Buddha statues for more than ten years.
At the end of 2020, Yi Yi came to Hu Junjun’s studio to visit behind the scenes of her creation and collection of Buddha statues.
Use dead branches to make a statue of Buddha
In 2020, the Xiamen International Buddhist Supplies Exhibition invites Hu Junjun to do a special exhibition as an artist. Using dead branches as materials, she spent two months and asked a number of workers for help to create a dead branch Buddha that is 16.8 meters long, 3.86 meters high, and weighs about 6 tons. During the exhibition, this big Buddha became the most eye-catching work on site.
“The creation of the subject of Nirvana, I started in 2015, and the creation using dead branches only started two years ago.”
Hu Junjun said that the reason why he hasn’t started doing it for a long time is that he hasn’t found suitable materials, and he’s afraid of making this subject tacky. “Those seemingly shiny materials are popular nowadays, but I don’t think it’s not. Nirvana in my mind.” Finally, she thought of the dead branches, which are a symbol of the end of life. It comes from the soil and finally returns to the soil.
The statues made by dead branches are the same as many Buddha images in the paintings. They only have a posture, and no face portrayal. In Hu Junjun’s view: “On weekdays, people always cling to many concrete things. Looking at these from a different angle, every concrete thing is too small, and even life and death are insignificant.”
From cool girls with shaved heads to devout Buddhists
When I visited Hu Junjun for the first time, I thought I would meet her in the art factory of her famous artist husband, but found that the meeting place was in a small studio far away from the factory. She came here step by step every day, made tea with a simple tea set, and then began to devote herself to the creation of the “Buddha’s Nirvana Picture”.
Hu Junjun was very rebellious when she was young. She once shaved her head and ran from her hometown of Shaoxing to Beijing in the early 1990s, determined to be a free poet and artist. In 1995, she won the acclaimed Liu Li’an Poetry Award. .
In 1998, the 27-year-old Hu Junjun sold all his belongings and took a few hundred dollars with him and went to New York with her husband Zhang Huan.
In the fifth year of living in New York, by chance, she walked into the Dongchu Temple in Queens. In this humble old brick apartment, she read the works of Master Sheng Yan. . Buddhism’s answer to the question of life and death shocked but convinced this girl who was “sensitive to life and death since she was a child”. Soon after, she officially converted to Master Shengyan, named “Changguan”.
North Grotto Temple in Qingyang, Gansu
In 2006, Hu Junjun returned from New York to settle in China, and every year he visited the grottoes in the northwestern part of the Central Plains. In the summer of 2015, at the North Grotto Temple in Qingyang, Gansu, she saw for the first time seven giant Buddhas in the Northern Wei style that were preserved intact, and she was deeply shocked and impressed:
“Each big Buddha is 8 meters tall, and the two Bodhisattvas next to him are 4 meters high. They are very magnificent. I was moved to tears on the spot. As a mortal, my eyes can see. To such great statues! The moment I looked at them, I felt like the dust settled down.”
After looking up the information, I learned that the Beishiku Temple was excavated in 509 AD during the Northern Wei Dynasty. I don’t know how many wars and dynasties have gone through in the middle. It was not rediscovered and excavated until 1959. Maybe the Buddha statue has fallen asleep here. Thousands of years.
Many people wonder why she was moved to tears in this not-so-known cave? In fact, as early as 2015, Hu Junjun had already visited the ruins of these grottoes. “From Yungang in Longmen to Mogao Grottoes, their greatness has long been seen in books and videos, so when you get to those places, they are actually To confirm and worship those great arts that have been engraved in the mind.”
And for the North Grotto Temple, she has only seen such a name in the scattered materials, and she has never seen a decent photo of the cave. Before reaching the cave, she thought it was just a broken hole, “As you can imagine, I was shocked at the time!”
As an artist, she wanted to do something for her beliefs, combined with art; and she has always been interested in the ultimate question of life and death, so she silently made a wish in this cave: “To take Nirvana as the topic , To leave some images for the Buddha who reveals the truth of life.
Invite the Buddha to the Chinese landscape
The reclining Buddha is actually the image of Buddha’s Nirvana, and it is still enshrined in many temples today. In the Chinese folk belief culture, “Nirvana” is often simply understood as the “death” of the Buddha.
The actual meaning of Nirvana is far more than the word “death”, and it symbolizes that the Buddha’s practice is complete and he will enter the realm of no birth, no death, and freedom. “A state that transcends life and death, is always happy and pure, and has troubles and rests forever.” Hu Junjun said.
The work “Scenery of Nirvana”
Nirvana, as a creative subject, first started in India. Among the trees in the Shuangsara, the scene of the Buddha’s passing into extinction is recorded in the “Great Nirvana Sutra”. Hu Junjun said: “I invited the Buddha to mainland China again, and let him show his nirvana in the Chinese landscape The beauty of extinction.”