About the Series · Hetu Luoshu · Tea
Hetu Luoshu (2011, Wuyi Mountain residency) is the landmark project in which the artist opened his conceptual work with tea culture. It takes its method from the ancient intertextuality of “chart” and “writing”: tea dregs as the “River Chart,” the body's intervention into the landscape as the “Luo Writing,” completing at Wuyi Mountain a plural practice running from field survey to cultural map, and rebuilding the deep connection between heaven, earth and the human.
Full Essay
Hetu Luoshu — a Conceptual Art Project
In 2011 the artist took up residence at Wuyi Mountain and began the Hetu Luoshu residency project. This is a deep dialogue between the ancient Chinese cosmological diagram and contemporary conceptual art.
The Conceptual Origin
The River Chart and the Luo Writing are the source of yin-yang, the five phases and numerical arts. The River Chart presents the generation of heaven and earth through image; the Luo Writing establishes the order of space and time through number. The ancients held that “chart on the left, writing on the right, neither to be neglected,” which is precisely the basic method of the division of knowledge. The artist takes this as his core methodology, converting the intertextual structure of “chart” and “writing” into a conceptual framework for contemporary work.
Field and Body
From 2011 the artist travelled around China, carrying out systematic field surveys of silk, papermaking and tea culture. He took up residence at Wuyi Mountain many times, studying in depth the influence of Da Hong Pao tea upon the world, exploring the relation between tea culture and indigenous people, and the connection of tea to world history and culture. During the residency the artist intervened naked among the mountains and waters, letting the body become “landscaped,” establishing a deep relation between the human and nature.
The Practice of Making
The project contains multiple experiments in media: working on xuan paper with the residue of tea dregs, taking tea as ink and dregs as form; drawing a cultural-geographical map of Wuyi Mountain marked with place names; carrying out improvised actions in rock caves and stream valleys. The tea-dreg installation is the “River Chart” — visible material form; the bodily action and the cultural map are the “Luo Writing” — the invisible order of time and space and of historical memory. The two verify each other, forming a complete understanding of Chinese tea culture.
Philosophical Transformation
The nine-palace numerical structure of the Luo Writing corresponds to the spatial order of Wuyi Mountain's thirty-six peaks and ninety-nine crags; the terraced layout of the tea gardens and the “rock bone and flower fragrance” of rock tea are the natural manifestation of the numerical order of heaven and earth. The yin-yang and five phases of the River Chart and the Luo Writing are transformed into the cold, hot, warm and cool natures of tea — the “rock rhyme” of Da Hong Pao is precisely the condensation of the vapour of heaven and earth within the leaf.
The Significance of the Project
This is the starting point at which the artist formally began to make art with tea culture. Seen from the angle of the River Chart and the Luo Writing, the project realised a threefold conceptual shift: converting the ancient cosmological diagram into a framework of thought for contemporary ecological art; rebuilding, through “chart on the left, writing on the right,” the knowledge of image and text severed by modernity; and, taking the body as medium, making “chart” and “writing” meet among the mountains and waters. Setting out from the specific site of Wuyi Mountain, it connects to the world-historical dimension of tea culture — and this is precisely the deep echo, in contemporary art, of the source of Chinese civilisation's wisdom.