Triumph over Adversity

Woodcarving

Phoebe Namu

Huang Kuo-Shu

In 2002, Huang Kuo-Shu took all the difficulties and hardships suffered on the long way to India for Buddhist Scriptures by Master Xuan Zang as the theme and began creating “Triumph over Adversity”, which showed Master Xuan Zang passed across the Central Asian Desert alone with both feet stepped on the hot sandy desert and crossed thousands of miles in the sun with foehn wind.  In order to reproduce the scene, Huang Kuo-Shu searched out relevant text pictures for up to more than a year and read various versions of Master Xuan Zang's  biography, and referred to the “Buddhist Records of the Western World” written by Xuan Zang, and made violent mental efforts day and night.  While creating the carving, he imagined himself in the sandstorm fourteen hundred years ago, facing the difficulties of food and water shortages, struggling several times in the edge of life and death, he experienced Master Xuan Zang's willingness which was “would rather go westbound and die, never return eastbound and survive”.

On a 120-centimeter Taiwan incense-cedar, Huang Kuo-Shu skillfully turns the base into a desert sand dune.  Animal bones signify danger of desert ruthless, Xuan Zang and the horses walked against the sandstorms, the creator cleverly uses the visions to present the carved character's inherent spiritual world.