Every day, the young people of this new generation think about birth and growing up. First, growing up and feeding; but sustenance is also needed to maintain village, district, city and country as well. And so the earth does not grow, it only shrinks.
High-rise buildings are knocked down in one day.
Mountains grow taller and taller until one day they explode.
Before I was born, my dad dreamed about an old man wearing white. The old man rode a horse and stopped in front of my dad’s house, leaving a package with him. The old man said, “There is a great son to be born”. But when I was born, I was very hard to take care of. The reality seemed different from the dream.
When I was three years old, I got a fever and slept at my grandmother’s house. I saw an old man sitting on a roof wearing white, with wide-open eyes and a big mouth. He looked scary, but I really wanted to see him. He looked familiar, like the old man in my dad’s dream. So I thought, “In my life, there will be many difficulties”.
The old man showed me a knife to fight bad people.
The knife is a paintbrush with colours.
When I was five years old, I saw a cow give birth to its calf. I was so nervous, my body was shaking. I could not walk. I cried and looked for help. Then, I never wanted to know how people gave birth.
I was born in the 1970s, during the war. Everywhere in the country there was danger, and it was very frightening. I was hungry. All the leaders had bad faces. When you look at this painting, the island in the middle is my own experience. There is an adventure, a musician, the love of a group of people. I experienced a very hard life living with Communist people.
When I first encountered Buddhism, I saw the dark yellow shining robe of a monk. It made me so excited, and my body was so light, I wanted to tell the world that life was born and will die. It is the same as a tree giving fruit, flowering, falling to the ground and growing again. When the tree gets old, its leaves fall down and the tree dies.
The collage on the left-hand side of the painting is like a mountain growing and exploding. The collage in the middle of the work is like the centre of a virgin. The collage on the right-hand side is like life—growing and developing a society full of ancient culture and buildings.
