Weaving the Dharma Wheel

包蓉（1997年生）现工作生活于伦敦和北京。本科曾就读于中国美术学院雕塑与公共艺术专业，2021年毕业于芝加哥艺术学院获得纯艺术学士学位并荣获杰出奖学金，2023年研究生毕业于英国皇家艺术学院雕塑专业。她的创作通过动态与参与式装置探讨物质性与感知结构之间的张力。


作品标题：《回旋》

材料：绞罗、金属结构、旋转装置
年份：2025
尺寸：190cmx130x130cm

作品介绍：作品以中国传统丝织物“罗”为核心媒介——这种自汉代延续至今的轻薄丝织物，由纯天然纤维织成，因其通透、轻盈的质感，被广泛用于宫廷礼制、宗教法器与士大夫服饰之中，承载着权力、信仰与审美的多重象征。然而在当代语境中，“罗”常被简化为消费化、风格化的东方符号，与其精微织造背后的历史与思想渐行渐远。
在《回旋》中，“罗”被重新构造为一株悬浮、持续旋转的植物造型，其形态源于自然的生长逻辑，旋转方式则借鉴宗教经轮的形式。轻盈的纤维在圆周运动中捕捉光影与空气的细微流动，将有机形态与机械循环并置：一方面唤起仪式性的冥想与虔诚感，另一方面在去除诵经祈福的宗教功能后，成为一种被抽离意义的机械性重复。
作品在物质与观念之间建立了张力：它既回溯了传统织造工艺与宗教仪式的历史，也直面现代文化机制下意义被视觉化、形式化与可复制化的过程。旋转的“罗”既是历史与信仰的隐喻，也是对当下的讽刺——在被观看、记录与转述的循环中，信仰与文化记忆被无声地重构、稀释，直至化为一种可被消费的景观。

Rong Bao (b. 1997) lives and works between London and Beijing. She studied Sculpture and Public Art at the China Academy of Art, received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2021 with a Distinguished Scholarship, and completed her MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 2023. Through kinetic and participatory installations, her practice examines the tension between materiality and structures of perception.
Title: Weaving the Dharma Wheel
Materials: silk gauze (luo), metal armature, rotating mechanism
Year：2025
Dimension：190cmx130x130cm

Work statement:
This work centers on the traditional Chinese silk textile luo, a lightweight fabric that has continued since the Han dynasty. Woven from natural fibers and prized for its translucency and lightness, luo has long been used in courtly ritual, religious paraphernalia, and scholars’ attire, carrying layered associations of power, belief, and taste. In contemporary contexts, however, luo is often reduced to a stylized, consumer-facing Oriental motif, drifting away from the history and thought embodied in its refined techniques.
In Rotation, luo is reconfigured into a suspended, continuously revolving plant-like form. Its silhouette follows the logic of organic growth, while its motion draws on the format of the prayer wheel. As the fibers turn, they register minute shifts of light and air, setting an organic figure against a mechanical cycle. On one hand it evokes a meditative, ritual sensibility. On the other, once the devotional function of recitation is removed, the act becomes a mechanical repetition emptied of prayer.
The work establishes a tension between matter and idea. It looks back to traditional weaving and ritual histories while confronting how, within modern cultural mechanisms, meaning is visualized, formalized, and rendered replicable. The spinning luo is both a metaphor for history and faith and a critique of the present, where belief and cultural memory are silently reconfigured and diluted through cycles of viewing, recording, and retelling until they become a consumable spectacle.