March, 2019
Sense World Series
March, 2018
In this captivating project, I tap into the philosophical marrow of Taoism and the mystical universe of the I Ching - or the Book of Changes - which coincidentally shares the same name as mine, Zhou Yi. This collection of ink drawings and digital posters marries traditional Chinese symbology with contemporary graphic design, creating a bridge between ancient wisdom and modern aesthetics.
The wind blows above the earth.
Seeing is not losing Tao (未失道也).
----Chapter 20 of I-Ching
Chinese character for Tao
The Chinese character for Tao is made up of two parts. On the left is the pictograph ch’o, representing a foot taking a step, and on the right is shou, a head. The foot can mean a path or way, while the head has a couple of possible meanings: it could be someone walking along the path or it could contain the idea of thought; in other words, choosing a path.
These explanations are taken from The Way of Chinese Painting by Mai-mai Sze who suggests that shou (head) and ch’o (foot), taken together, symbolizes the idea of wholeness.
Because the eye gazes but can catch no glimpse of it, It is called elusive.
Because the ear listens but cannot hear it,
It is called the rarefied.
Because the hand feels for it but cannot find it, It is called the infinitesimal. ...
These are called the shapeless shapes,
Forms without form,
Vague semblances.
Go towards them, and you can see no front;
Go after them, and you see no rear.
----Lao-Tzu
In Kiaochou came a great drought so that men and animals died in the hundreds. In despair, the citizens called for an old rainmaker who lived in the mountains nearby. Richard Wilhelm saw how the rainmaker was brought into town in a sedan chair, a tiny little gray-bearded man. He asked to be left alone outside the town in a little hut, and after three days it rained, and even snowed! Richard Wilhelm succeeded in being allowed to interview the old man and asked him how he made the rain. But he answered, “I haven’t made the rain, of course not.” And then, after a pause, he added, “You see it was like this—throughout the drought the whole of nature and all the men and women here were deeply disturbed. They were no longer in Tao. When I arrived here I became also disturbed. It was so bad that it took me three days to bring myself again into order.” And then he added, with a smile, “Then naturally it rained.”
-----Barbara Hannah
When in the winter nights snowstorms tear at the cabin and one morning the landscape is hushed in its blanket of snow....
Thinking’s saying would be stilled in its being only by becoming unable to say that which must remain unspoken.
-----Heidegger
When the early morning light quietly grows above the mountains ... .
The world’s darkening never reaches to the light of Being.
We are too late for the gods and too early for Being. Being’s poem,
just begun, is man.
To head toward a star—this only.
To think is to confine yourself to a single thought that one day stands
still like a star in the world’s sky.
-----Mencius
