Yixuan Xiao

Animistic

This project is an iterative projection installation that reflects on the shifting notion of presence in relation to cultural heritage in the digital age. Drawing from Buddhist mural traditions originally created for specific architectural and ritual spaces, the work uses projection and reflective materials to simulate processes of detachment, transformation, and redistribution. A scanned mural image is projected onto a sculptural assemblage of reflective surfaces, where it is fragmented and dispersed into the surrounding environment, forming a dynamic “digital mural.”

“This work emerges from a reflection on presence within installation art and its transformation in the digital age. Installation, as a medium, is often understood through its condition of being physically “present” within a specific space. Yet this notion becomes unstable when considered alongside displaced cultural artifacts. A fragment of the Xinghua Temple's mural, now housed at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, exists as a removed surface—detached from its original architectural and ritual context. Originally created for a sacred spatial environment, the mural’s meaning has shifted through its extraction and relocation. This dislocation raises a critical question: what remains of presence when an artwork is severed from the space that once defined it? In response, I reconstruct and extend this condition through digital means. By projecting a scanned image of Mahāsāṃghika Jātaka mural which still remain at the original site, Mogao Caves, onto a reflective sculptural structure. It composed of materials that refract, fragment, and disperse light. I simulate the act of removal while simultaneously re-situating the image within a new, expanded field. The structure itself draws from visual imaginaries of the Pure Land in Han Mahayana Buddhist texts, suggesting a spiritual and metaphysical dimension beyond physical space. Through layers of projection and reflection, the mural is no longer fixed. It dissolves into fragments, reappearing across surrounding surfaces as a dispersed, digital mural. This process reflects both the historical displacement of the original work and its contemporary circulation on a global scale. Ultimately, this project questions how presence is redefined when mediated by digital technologies. It proposes that in the digital condition, presence is no longer bound to a single site, but exists as something distributed, refracted, and continuously reconstituted.”