artsperiencelife

Square Word Calligraphy

Inspired by Xu Bing’s Square Word Calligraphy in 2019, Ignatius started experimenting with this form of gibberish Chinese character calligraphy. Here is a small collection of his works

The Lamb

Words with meaning? Yes and no as ‘The Lamb’ is executed in meaningless meaningful words of Jesus’ love. Does His love need any language to be understood and felt? Adopting Square Word Calligraphy, of English words written in Chinese character format, developed by Xu Bing in the mid-90s, ‘The Lamb’ is an artwork to speak of the 14 Stations of the Cross in meaninglessly meaningful words. And a detached station, 15th station, is of Jesus resurrecting and rising up to sit on the right side of His Father.

1st Station – Condemned to death
2nd Station – Bears His cross
3rd Station – First fall
4th Station – Mother Mary
5th Station – Cyrenian Simon
6th Station – Veronica
7th Station – Second fall
8th Station – Women of Jerusalem
9th Station – Third fall
10th Station – Stripped
11th Station – Nailed to cross
12th Station – Dies on cross
13th Station – Descent from cross
14th Station – Laid in tomb
15th Station – Arisen

The whole figure represents Jesus nailed to the Cross. The stations are stacked in 7 layers to symbolise the biblical significance of the number 7. The Holy Trinity is depicted by the background colour blue, and the rays of warm red, orange and yellow shining down from the light source to appear to be a triangle.

The 15th Station represents the Resurrection of Jesus pulling up toward the light source.