I curated an exhibition for two photographers whom I am fortunate to count as mentors and friends. Yao Jui-Chung is an artist from Taiwan, and my collaborator on the Altar Space project. Tenzin Priyadarshi is a monk from India, and my instructor for the “Principles of Awareness” class with Joi Ito. After I introduced Yao and Venerable Tenzin in Taipei a couple of years ago, showing their work together was an inevitability.
HOHOBase gallery, on the Northeast coast of Taiwan, is perched above an old railroad track that bisects the Shen’ao mountain and beach, with a view of the sea. It’s a perfect spot for the meeting of these two visionaries.
OSCILLATIONS: Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi Rinpoche × Yao Jui-Chung
Dates: 2025.05.07–2025.07.27
Opening: 2025.05.14 (WED) 14:30
Venue: HOHObase (No. 93, Sec 2, Jianji Rd, Ruifang District, New Taipei City)
Curators: Christopher Adams, Sophie Chiang
HOHObase is proud to present Oscillations, bringing together the work of Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi Rinpoche and Yao Jui-Chung for the very first time. The exhibition comprises thirty-five photographs from the artists’ long-term spiritual and pictorial inquiries that traverse our living world and our inner nature.
Venerable Tenzin’s work encompasses portrait, landscape, still life, and nature photography from around the world. Over 100 of his colorful “photographic essays” captured in fifteen countries are collected in Solivagant (Prajnopaya Institute, 2024). The title is from the Latin, “one who wanders alone,” and the images reveal this essence of solitude in movement.
Yao has documented around 700 gigantic statues of gods across Taiwan on black-and-white film. This series produced two books, Incarnation (ARTouch, 2017), and Incarnation Plus (ARTouch, 2023), and won the Taishin Arts Award in 2018. The English title refers to the embodiment of our self-image in these deities, while the Chinese title (literally, ‘Giant God Connection’) conceives of them as an island-wide spiritual network.
An oscillation is a repeated variation between two or more different states (like a swinging pendulum, a plucked string, a beating heart, or an electromagnetic wave), and is made manifest in the Buddhist concepts of dependent origination, cyclic change, and impermanence. Venerable Tenzin travels the globe and photographs spontaneously while embarking on an immeasurable and contemplative inward journey. Yao methodically picks each local site and vantage point to photograph these giant statues, which hear our prayers while the cracks start to show.
The contrast between these photographs by Venerable Tenzin and Yao Jui-Chung expose a shared understanding. As dedicated practitioners of Buddhism and photography, their divergent paths have brought them, momentarily, to the very same place.
An opening ceremony for Oscillations will be held at HOHObase on Wednesday, May 14, 2025 at 2:30pm with the Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi Rinpoche and Yao Jui-Chung in attendance. We kindly welcome you to visit.
The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi Rinpoche is the Founding President and CEO of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). imonk.org
Yao Jui-Chung is a painter, photographer, and curator, and professor at National Taiwan Normal University and Taipei National University of the Arts. yaojuichung.com
HOHObase is an exhibition space founded in 2021 by Ho Ching-Tai and Huang Yo-Yu. hohobase.com
Filed under: Projects Taiwan Exhibition Featured
Christopher Adams is an art producer and computer programmer based in Taipei.
