木玉明

Guirensi Temple

28 November — 28 December 2025

Happy Birthday

Dimensions
135 × 35 cm

11 of 11

Picture Story

Charcoal, ink and pigment on raw xuan paper, 135 × 35 cm, painted at Guirensi Temple, December 2025.

A scroll birthday: at the left, a faint older figure fading into violet mist; the yellow-clad master; a girl in white; the gilded 佛 character; the birthday child standing inside a halo of yellow; dark-robed mourners drawn close; a villager with a black dog at the far right. Celebration and farewell held in one horizontal breath.

Project Story

《Guirensi Temple》 is an in-situ creation project carried out by the artist Mu Yuming at Guirensi Temple in Taining, Fujian, from 28 November to 28 December 2025. A small village shrine hidden in a mountain hollow, kept day-to-day by a local villager — the "temple keeper" — the place presents an ecology distinct from institutional monasteries: the villagers treat the temple as their own courtyard, sweeping at dawn, offering incense, tidying the altar, footsteps merging softly with the morning mist rolling through the hills.

The artist remained there for a full month, holding "my life is my art" as the core principle and fusing daily practice with artistic creation.

Self-made charcoal (from tea-fire embers) · raw xuan paper · ink