Dharma / 法, 2026

Statement

A Fuku-Daruma traditionally receives one painted eye when a wish is made and the other when it is fulfilled. Dharma covers these eyes in black, a sculptural experiment that reconsiders the meaning and appearance of a familiar figure used for wishing. The work asks whether wishing can take the place of thinking and acting, a question I also direct at myself. Claims that wishes can produce outcomes, such as manifestation, are also subject to this question.

Dharma is a Sanskrit word for law; in Buddhist contexts, it refers to truth and teachings. It also forms part of the name Bodhidharma, the Buddhist figure on whom the daruma is based. The title returns to the daruma's religious origins to reconsider both the meanings invested in it and the object itself.

Taking the form of a mass-produced Fuku-Daruma as a model, I make five cedar figures of the same shape. Drawing on techniques used in wooden Buddhist sculpture, each figure is assembled from five components using yosegi-zukuri and joined with nikawa, an animal glue. The work repeats a widely circulated form while tracing its religious origins through its construction. I reinterpret medome, the woodworking term for grain filling, as "stopping the eyes", progressively extending the area covered by ultra-black coating.

The black that covers the eyes also suppresses reflected light to an extreme degree, concealing grain and shadows that reveal depth. The coated surface appears flat; rounded exposed wood and a black silhouette meet within the same solid body. By covering both the eyes that carry a wish and the cues through which we perceive depth, the same black questions the figure's meaning and appearance.

The five figures represent the same form one year, one month, one week, one day and one hour ago. Black covers 15, 25, 40, 62 and 95 per cent of their total surfaces, respectively. These proportions were chosen through front and side comparisons to make the five stages distinguishable. As the sequence approaches the present, black expands and the form becomes harder to grasp. This arrangement reverses the expectation that what is nearer in time can be grasped more clearly. It addresses a present that becomes past the moment it is captured.

Even when the eyes are covered and the familiar form becomes harder to perceive, the object itself remains before us. The work attempts to strip away the meanings invested in the figure and the visual information that sustains its familiar appearance, returning to the structure and presence of the object that remains. It asks how we relate, now, to a present we cannot fully grasp and to what we will eventually lose.