Zhang Huan's sculpture "Pilgrimage" depicts his nude body half submerged in water. This reenacts his performance art piece where he laid on a block of ice for ten minutes. The sculpture symbolizes the suffering of Chinese peasants throughout history under persecution. Peasants endured hardship during times like the Cultural Revolution, finding solace in Buddhism which taught bonding with nature could provide salvation. Huan's work conveys these struggles that trace back to Buddhism's introduction to China via the Silk Road in the 2nd century AD, which flourished until later persecutions.

1. ! By first glance at Zhang Huan’s sculpture piece “Pilgrimage”, one would ponder the
reason for half of his nude body being belly-down, fully submerged in water. This would lead to
the thought of his face even being half in as well, and leave us as observers to believe that his
other works of art must display a relationship between the nude body and nature. Even further
thinking would come to an incline that as a native man of China, the nakedness along with
submergence of his face must hold some symbolic meaning of suffering and how he dealt with
that suffering in his life, and perhaps displays it in other performance-type art pieces. Born into a
family of migrant workers during the peak of the cultural revolution in China, Huan’s life was
filled with hardships that millions of peasants suffered during Mao Zedong’s communist reign.
Many peasants clung to religious practices that gave them hope and the most prevalent of these
was Buddhism, which had originated and flourished in China’s early history. It was persecuted
during the cultural revolution along with many other aspects of a rural individual’s life. This was
something that had occurred before in Chinese history but Buddhism held to be a significant
religion for the suffering Chinese population to look to for guidance throughout history. Buddhist
teachings give practicers the chance for salvation from their pain and suffering through bonding
with nature and hardships by devoting themselves to its doctrines. Huan’s other works previous
to “Pilgrimage” display acts of suffering that sum up many individuals lives in China during
persecution such as “12m2”, in which he covered himself in honey and sat in a dirty latrine and
became intensely covered in flies. Visceral performances in self-exile like “Original Sound”, in
which he laid nude on the ground with earthworms in his mouth until they crawled out, evoke
emotions of the hardships suffered within China’s history of persecution. These pieces, however,
also demonstrate the painful sufferings of peasants bonded along with their connection to nature
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2. through Buddhism by which they come to terms with enduring their lives in order to reach
ultimate salvation. Using body art and performance for his pieces enhances the Buddhist
principles peasants have guided themselves with and brings out moral, ethical, and political
issues.
We will use Haun’s face submerged into water as our door to another world that will lead
to paths reaching far back in history connecting up until the culmination of his expression of
emotions in the piece. In the piece, we see Zhang Huan laying halfway submerged, nude, in
water and this is a sculptural re-enactment of his performance art piece “Pilgrimage” in which he
laid nude on a block of ice seated on an imperial-like Chinese bed for ten minutes. The sculpture
was constructed out of tiang qing stone and places Huan’s body as if it were half floating on the
water. It is position belly-down in a way that it appears he is not struggling or unwilling, but
rather that he is one with the water. He is boxed in by the rectangular shape around his body, yet
his hands are outstretched to a subtle point pressing down in the water as if he is feeling the
surface in which he is laying; soaking up the feeling his body has with it. His back is arched to
further present this feeling aspect of his surface and his ears remain just above water, as if he still
has a sense connected to the outside world as well. This spiritual, mental, and physical
expressiveness at play in the piece displays a generic account of the struggle of the majority of
China’s population throughout history that can be traced back to the beginning of Buddhism in
China.
The entry of Buddhism into China originated from India primarily but this was only made
possible by dynastic changes and expansion innovations. Prior to the Han dynasty in China
(200BC-200AD), there was four centuries of disunion in which northern and southern China
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3. were two separate entities. Leading up to this dis-unification, Confucianism was the prominent
way of thought that existed but once the turmoil arose and many educated were forced to flee to
the south, a new way of thinking to answer the questions of warfare and social chaos was
searched for. Buddhism began to take root in souther China but was not yet looked upon with
much interest due to the lingering Confucianism and the fact that it was foreign with little
support for teachings. Once the Han Dynasty reunified China, the entry of Buddhism was soon
allowed to take place under the vast expansion policies by Emperor Wu. The Emperor pushed
armies into Central Asia and for the first time China came into contact with many new cultures
of people they had never been exposed to before. Once the armies pushed through and
connections were made, a trade path started to emerge between Central Asian countries such as
India. This trade route came to be known as the Silk Road, an extensive trade route linking China
to the western part of the eastern hemisphere. The Silk Road played an enormous role in the
cultural exchange between China and Central Asia that allowed for new developments within its
own culture. Merchants began to travel to China bringing goods, cultural artifacts, riches, and
ideas. Once it was established, monks from India migrated in short doses, looking for new
worlds of sentient beings to convert and they reached China around the first century. In time,
Buddhist monks traveled the trading network bringing with them copies of the holy texts of
Buddha, known as sutras. At the time, the Han was socially and ideologically stable so there was
not much audience for the Buddhist monks that came but they remained in China in hopes to
expand their religious knowledge to others. In the late second century the Hand Dynasty
crumbled and Confucianism disintegrated with it to an extent. The third century came around and
produced Neo-Daoism which in turn produced eccentric writings, artistic works, and social
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4. conventions. These Neo-Daoists dominated the new way of thought and searched for knowledge
of other ways of thoughts in cultures. They began paying attention to the Buddhist monks that
had migrated and stayed in China and started to read into the sutras they carried with them.
Sutras and Buddhism became of primary interest and the monks worked with Neo-Daoists to
express the thoughts and ideas within them. To do this the monks made an effort to present the
ideas in a Daoist-like way, and in turn the Neo-Daoist sought to interpret the sutras with a Daoist
touch. This, however, resulted in poor translation of the sutras but this was significant as the
Chinese began to form their own ways of Buddhism. As turmoil grew socially in China more and
more turned to these ways of thought and constructed monasteries to support them. This attracted
more, well-experienced monks to migrate in great numbers to China from India. These monks
brought with them more artifacts, images, and intense texts of Buddhism via the Silk Road
network, introducing a whole new form of art to express Buddhism for the Chinese. Also, these
monks helped the Chinese to construct more sophisticated translations of the sutras that were
closer to the true spirit of Buddhism which allowed Chinese audiences to come to a greater
comprehension of the nature of Buddhism. Thus, the result was an increasing number of youthful
Chinese males withdrawing from the turmoils of society and turning to the foreign scriptures of
sutras in order to become monks. Once this began to occur, Buddhism took off and flourished in
China, overshadowing Daoism and creating an entirely new way of thinking and religious culture
for Chinese people. Along with this came the mass development of Buddhist temples,
monasteries, and shrines all filled with rich pictorials, sculptures, and texts of Buddhism; some
originating from India and some new innovations developed in China. The courtyards of the
temples and shrines were filled with festivals, parades, and carnivals portraying the Buddhist
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5. deities gloriously through large images constructed by devout monks in order to promote
Buddhism.
Shortly after the flourishing of Buddhism, came the Tang Dynasty (620-907) which
reunified China. At the start of this dynasty Buddhism was widely accepted as the official
religion of China and was patronized by the state. However, persecution loomed inevitable as
some kingdoms began to denounce Buddhism. The main cause of this was the growing economic
importance of Buddhism which rooted from precedents set in the Han dynasty. Previously
monks/temples were exempt from taxes and had accrued a lot of wealth over time that the
government had no access to. During the late Tang, destabilization came into play and this
caused a proclamation of massive suppression of Buddhism in 845. The government took away
hundreds of thousands of monks statuses, destroyed tens of thousands of monasteries, and
confiscated millions of acres of temple land. This persecution served to destroy a lot of historical
relics of art representing the beginning of Buddhism in China. Buddhism dropped off after this
but remained persistent in the undercurrents of society in the rural lands.
Buddhism was never again as prominent as it was during the Tang Dynasty, but during
the nineteenth century it began to become very prevalent in rural areas but once again suffered
persecution during the 1960s and 1970s during the Cultural Revolution. Mao Zedong had risen
to power in recent decades and started the Cultural Revolution in 1966. It was aimed to restore
ideological purity and pursue a radical economic development. However, this movement mainly
persecuted the rural, migrant working class made up of peasants. Peasants were stuck in their
rural areas with no say as the Communist Party would punish any opposition severely. They
suffered in education as it was available to them on low priority since there was call for more
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6. workers, more soldiers, and more peasants. This left rural workers trapped under terrible
conditions with no hope at advancing their lives through education that gave them no technical
or scientific tools for economical advancement, as well as killed any of their individual
ambitions. Thus, with such suffering the rural class was made of many Buddhists who looked to
religion and salvation as their only chance at a better life. Pure land Buddhism preached that
salvation was attained through devotional practices by worshipping images of art of different
deities. This was a non-intellectual form of worship that required no text and thus appealed to the
abundantly illiterate peasant population. This practice taught that through their devotion, they
could escape their lives of misery and be admitted after death to the “pure land” where they
would enjoy eternal happiness and comfort. This allowed for a sense of purpose through
observing and cherishing sculptures, pictorials, and other constructions of Buddhist deities, and
thus, these peasants held art very close to them since they could not read texts. Another form of
Buddhism is Zen Buddhism. This also rejected the value of text being necessary to reach
enlightenment and salvation. For these practicers, they focused on the Buddha’s radically
different insight into the nature of the world as an impermanent realm of suffering and grasped it
through sitting quietly in nature, or meditating, on their thoughts. To do this successfully they
work themselves away from languages and categories of understanding and let nature connect
them to a better understanding of the world they live in. Through asking questions that defy
rational answers they could reach enlightenment greater and enhance their escape form the
suffering of the world they inhabit.
These Buddhist practices of struggling peasant workers who had to endure such hardship
in life can be traced back far into China’s past where they suffered the same persecutions.
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7. Comfort was found through the body’s mental, physical, and spiritual aspects of Buddhism that
lead these individuals to a sense of enlightened joy from the cruel nature of the world they
suffered to a potential eternal joy from the connection to their world’s nature they strive to have.
All of these connections wind down a path that comes from Zhang Huan’s piece, which produces
a key to a potential even deeper understanding of these connections that stretch further into other
realms of Chinese history that culminated in the suffering Huan endured through his early life
and he displayed them through intertwined, raw emotional connections in “Pilgrimage”.
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8. Sources:
1. http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/cosmos/ort/buddhism.htm
2. http://www.indiana.edu/~e232/12-Buddhism.pdf
3. http://www.zhanghuan.com/ShowWorkContent.asp?id=62&iParentID=33&mid=4
4. http://zhanghuan.com/ShowText.asp?id=30&sClassID=1
5. http://artasiapacific.com/Magazine/66/StandingOnTheShouldersOfGiantsZhangHuan
6. http://youtube.com/watch?v=szyZXfq8Z7A
7. Terry F. Kleeman
The Ancient Chinese World
Oxford, New York
Oxford University Press
2005
Pg. 2-21
8. Lobsung Tubten Jigme Gyatso
Surviving the Dragon: A Tibetan Lama’s Account of 40 Years Under Chinese Rule
Rodale, New York
Macmillan
2010
Pg. 18-31, 74-88
9. Naomi Standen
Demystifying China
Lanham, Maryland
Rowman & Littlefield
2013
Pg. 66-124
10.Matthew T. Kapstein
Buddhism Between Tibet and China
Boston, Massachusetts
Wisdom Publications
2009
Pg. 241-281
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