Cang Xin’s Neo-Shamanism: Taking Nature as Psychic to Convey Spiritualism

After “Cang Xin’s Mythology” a large-scale solo exhibition in 2008, Cang Xin continues to construct mysterious rituals painstakingly. In his exhibition “Rites of Nature” he conveys a sense of consciousness mutation. The whole space is filled with symbolism as mythology of Shamanism. At the center of the exhibiting hall there is a global hillock built with wood ashes, ornamented by stout glossy ganoderma. A group of deer specimens are hung upside down on the ceiling in the fancy dreamland of light and shadow. It looks like these deer are walking in Penglai fairyland of Chinese ancient mythology. The wood-ash hillock implies a contradictory fact that fire and wood restrain and engender each other. Ash as the other form of wood symbolizes existence of fire which signifies intersection of death and re-born. Glossy ganoderma regarding as incarnation of five evolutive phases in Chinese culture, along with the deer represent a kind of ability to heal souls and body. Generally there are two characteristics in Shamanism definition. The first is consciousness mutation: throughout Shamanism development history, consciousness mutation means ecstasy fettle which implies mutation as death does. In the state of mutation, a bridge is formed between ordinary reality and non-ordinary reality. The word “ecstasy” stems from the Greek word “ekstasis” which literally means “to be placed outside” or “to be placed”, referring to transcending someone’s own state-over ordinary reality to communicate with non-ordinary reality. Such a process of mutation is called shamanic journey in Shamanism,it is similar to Process Art concept. The second is healing capacity. Whether Shamanic values are to get knowledge or power, both of them can heal soul and body, and take effect with other treatment. The guidelines of healing include spiritual assistants decisions and the way for cure. Shamanism heals not only people believing in it and others, but also the earth and the world, including substances, bodies, psychologies and souls. At a word, Shamanism is absorbed in healing the world, curing diseases or consciousness mutation, the ultimate goal is to maintain health and boost soundness for Shamanism, not only for human being, nature, and their mutual relationship, but also for human’s potential abilities and self-fulfillment. Therefore, it’s easy to understand why Cang Xin recently chooses glossy ganoderma, wood ash and deer, all of these are medicinal materials of traditional Chinese medicines including Tibetan medicine. The usage of these materials is also with special meanings in ecology and ecologic art. They are to become a part of new cultural symbols in Cang Xin’s hands.

In the five elements (of metal, wood, water, fire and earth) in ancient Chinese cosmology, Shamanism worships fire and considers fire comes from the heaven. It’s the most sacred and purest element in the world, which can sweep away anything nasty and demons and can be used for fortune-telling. There is almost no Shamanism ritual without fire, and all sacrificial objects should be devoted to “the fire-fiend” preferentially. Cang Xin’s previous performance art interpreted fire perfectly, his charcoals sculptures were masterpieces of “fire-fiend” and a kind of unique creation by Cang Xin. The fire is connected to ash hillock, defining the most proper description for his idea of five elements. His charcoal sculptures in various shapes, such as plants and animals, human and spiritual beings, ghosts and monsters were inter-transplanted, and evolved to contemplators with horse head and human’s body, prayers with human head and bole, cracking heart and fissile cell, which all together indicated the gradual development of Cang Xin’s whole conceptual practices, continuous transferring of his creation from “Cang Xin’s Mythology”. However, the emphases of his creations are no only the noumenon of artworks, but also nature triggered by the non-physical behaviors. The spiritualism concerned of nature and original symbolic elements compose a symbolistic space.

The traditional cultural resources except for Shamanism absorbed by Cang Xin is generalized occultism, the elementary purport of these is various doctrines and religious rituals which can help people to obtain spiritual strengths. Occultism includes various theories and practices such as imagination, spiritualism, research for “magic wand”, Yoga, natural magic, astrology, alchemy and so on. These deeply impacts on Cang Xin’s creation, and will continue to influence his art. Histories of religions had never been independent from social history. In a similar way, occultism history has also not been dependent from social society, continued to search the spiritualism of earth subject, maturity of individual consciousness transition. Modern people and artists pursue their own belief, it’s nature to accept the ancient and mysterious Shamanism into their lives. Shamanism is an archaic way to cultivate people to a religious doctrine, and it takes nature as source for spirituality and treatment. As a matter of fact, Shamanism has never been really disappeared from human’s history, while it’s only in contemporary era that it is adopted by people widely. There are at least three reasons for Shamanism revival in modern life as well as in contemporary art. These are as follows:
Firstly, Shamanism is to emphasize harmony between people and nature, not to pursue another world that doesn’t exist.
Secondly, for Shaman, they devoted themselves to Shamanism rituals in the wild, and come back to their normal lives.
Thirdly, modern viewpoints for healthiness are to attach importance to body, heart and soul, which is inner-linked with Shamanism’s perspectives on life and curing hearts.

As for the spiritualism, the revival of heathenism or Shamanism is based on human’s desire for self-actualization. After the 1960s, people started to zoom in self-spirituality, the meanings of self-spirituality is to suppose people are themselves sacred, and to find self-spirituality. Shamanism is the original way of self-actualization, opened a way for possibilities to each of us, enabling us to find out the mythologies inside, to search for the superego inner-prototypes and to look for our dreamland. Otherwise, the reason for Shamanism revival is human’s desire for non-organized religious or spirituality, and the environments movement etc.

In human’s history, alchemy, heathenism and Shamanism are parallel trilogy. Although there are three different historical orbits for them, they are actually under the same theory which emphasizes the indivisible relationship of human and nature, and appreciated by new ecologists and artists. The world outlook of Shamanism can be concluded as three points as follows. Firstly, everything in the world has their own lives. Secondly, all of them are related with each other. Thirdly, they are all sacred. Maybe it is the ecological crisis triggered by anthropocentrism or ever developed technology, human’s alienation from the nature resulted from mechanistic philosophy’s view of the world, or collectivism’s manipulation on individuals, all above are the causes of the “revival” of Shamanism. And it is under such circumstances that Shamanism forms its own characteristics, that is, lay emphasis on capacities of the nature and individuals. In the past, the roles of Shamanist can be only played by people from certain social classes, with special personalities or acknowledged by the public. However, till now, each one of us has the abilities to be a Shamanist, and it is similar to post-modern art, which regards everyone as artist. It turned out to agree with the idea “everything-as-one” and at last find out the sanctimony of everything in the world. It is actually a way to return to the mother of the earth as well as the natural motions of life itself, whether its joyfulness or afflictions, and make the body, spiritual and the soul finally see such a returning. Thus, the practice of Shamanism incarnates the originaire’s need to ecstasy, which is the core meaning of the existence of human being. Cang Xin’s conceptual practice can be viewed as neo-Shamanism, which is similar to the concept of Joseph Beuys he had long adored. By combating religious experiences and thoughts on art as a unified idea, Cang Xin gained a more profound powerfulness originated from two different objects with the similar essence. It contains subtle transferring of consciousness as well as ecstasy, thus it transcended the traditional definition of Shamanism.

After these years for struggling and hard-made choices, Cang Xin’s art practice is indicate to Shamanism as the original religion, its vitality is consist of the revival of modern Ecologism and the development of green movements. Human began to doubt about the disastrous outcomes of extreme modernization, and people gradually realize
that the advanced viewpoints of nature is returning to the ancient beliefs and wisdoms. Therefore, in the eyes of Shamanists, all things in nature are physics with hearts and souls, and they are endowed with ever-changing movements of lives. Cang Xin doesn’t exclude artists self-conscious beliefs, but he considers that they should also try hard to practice the peculiarity of art as avant-garde art lay emphasis on innovation and individuals. There are two value points in Cang Xin’s neo-Shamanism, one of which is the innovation on the form, while the other aspect is practices of individuals. As for peculiarity, it means the alienation from regulations or specific rules, as well as the reception and pursuit toward irregularity, with the result that irregularity itself becomes the rules, namely, from normality to abnormality, from uniformity to uncommonness, from facing the present reality to the after world.

Zhuang Hong Yi’s Cross-Culture Imagination and Surprises on Physicality

In the exhibition of Zhuang Hong Yi who lives and works in Europe (Netherlands), he made installations, sculptures and paintings to constitute a sort of spatial transformation that make the viewers surprised and a little bit disturbed. The artist gathers peculiar characteristic objects, and recast them like a craftsman or alchemist.

The main work of the exhibition is an installation. A coke bottle flies over, and suddenly floats above a medieval table. Such a fantastic scene is conceived from Zhuang Hong Yi’s recent invention of a magnetic device. Putting magnets into different objects, the artist manipulates the inner-contrastive strengths among these objects through attractive and repulsive forces. Therefore, they contain certain new connotations in the hands of the artist, no matter real objects or symbolic appliances they used to be.

Zhuang Hong Yi’s imagination doesn’t lay in his ability to conceive a metaphor according to his own feelings, but endowing the artwork with self-consciousness, and giving birth to new images at last. For this installation here, it is better for us to conclude that humans can only convey certain special metaphors through visions, than it reveals social Darwinism’s jungle law. Arousing human’s creative imaginations, not viewing substances in the world as static and superficial, is the very power that the reform of visual art’s media brings to artwork made up of various materials. The magnetic field is actually a metaphor for field of culture and art. Just as Martin Heidegger wrote in The Origin of the Work of Art, “equipments regulated by physicality are only half-objects while more than them. But they are also half-artwork, because of the lack of the self-sufficiency art owns.” The self-sufficiency of an artwork means it must contain deep meanings under certain circumstances, and such a kind of transcendence of meanings is the so-called “use of non-usefulness”, which is also the carrier of the “rites” here.

The exhibited sculptures are two similar pieces of Ming Dynasty long narrow tables, one of which is made of hard wood, but the other is stainless steel, which form a sharp contrast between them. There are seven carved faces of ancient Greek men on the tabletops.
Since the legs of the table are plunged into the wall, and the tabletops are still on the wall, it turns out these relieves of the table face the viewers directly, enabling the audience to communicate with them smoothly. They are neither imitations of other objects, nor representatives of people’s idols. They are just being there, working on moods of the creator of the work as well as the viewers through the sense of mysteries in them and the ever-changing space.

Zhuang Hong Yi uses a method of reversing the original meanings in his installations and sculptures. For example, bed itself is a place for sleeping and resting, but in Zhuang’s work, it is transferred to a tool for torturing people. His work Nail Beds the typical example for his applying of such a method. The shapes of the two beds are similar to that of classic beds, but used stainless steel and acrylic as the materials. Thousands of nails with screws are turning down into beds. Here the normal functions of the beds are reversed, and the common objects in our daily life bring forward amazing imaginations for the audience.

During his staying in Netherlands, Zhuang Hong Yi’s paintings had exceeded the concepts of traditional work, and turned to apply mixed media and cross-cultural ideas. The works shown on this exhibition are the typical examples of his new practice. He uses well-known Yangjiabu’s New Year pictures in Weifang, Shandong province as the materials of his work, and mixes them with interesting daily supplies, then paint on these materials with oil, ink and even lacquer in a seemingly casual way, but with amazing works finally created. During this exhibition, due to Zhuang’s creating on the spot, the materials, casual painting ways and essences of performance art are mingled together, presenting a seemly careless but fabulous expression synchronically.

After graduated from painting department in Sichuan Fine Arts Academy, Zhuang Hong Yi went for further study in Netherlands in 1989. And after about twenty years of learning and practicing abroad, he accumulated a great deal of experiences as a professional artist with wide-opened field of vision and valuable standpoints. Generally speaking, as so many artistic trends are gradually getting disappeared because of the influences of commercial capitals, there are still cross-cultural imaginations in his art creation, which is extremely precious. Maybe we can say that his only luggage is a museum of unlimited imagination. Non-style is his style, and he continuously bring together dreams that are uncertain, ambiguous, sometimes even overly simplified or beautiful but superficial, among which the images and popular social symbolic systems are excluded. He successfully avoids being set in the worldly

frame resulted from pluralism, and turned to search for the physicality of objects or “products”, thus to attract people to accept and appreciate his works. Such an alternative experiment has earned its own place, and will be never replaced by other trends of art.