The Buddha’s Ray | Chinese-Australian John Young on the trail of John Rabe ( de )
The Asia Pacific Times. A monthly newspaper from Germany, 2008-03
A perfectly circular rainbow appeared through the window of the airplane carrying the artist John Young to Berlin. In Chinese, this phenomenon is called “Buddha’s ray.” Searching for a name for his latest project, Young found this coincidence too good to pass up. The survivors of the Nanjing Massacre gave John Rabe the honorary title of “Living Buddha.”
It is the presence of the past in Berlin that has long fascinated John Young. He has been visiting the city since 1988. His current work is part of a project called Berlin Reflections, and it was made at the invitation of Berlin gallery owner Alexander Ochs. Four artists are to survey the German capital from a Chinese perspective in the coming months. Young explains his decision to explore the persona of John Rabe: “In my Berlin journey, I experienced a number of remarkable synchronous events or coincidences that have drawn my attention to John Rabe’s deeds in Nanjing in 1937.” Rabe, then a Siemens manager in Nanjing, risked all to shield about 200,000 Chinese from attack by Japanese soldiers. And while virtually noone in Germany knows about his remarkable humanitarian achievement, Rabe is honored to this day in China itself.
To Young, a philosopher and artist born in Hong Kong in 1956, the project is also part of a journey into his own past. Young’s family immigrated to Australia in 1967. Today, Young lives with his wife and children in Melbourne. “I don’t have a national identity,” he said. “My artistic works are an intellectual detour to a fictional identity.” Australia’s lack of a long historical heritage made Young’s search for his own cultural roots all the more urgent. As a result, his “trans-cultural works” make the battle for his own chosen location visible beyond cultural dualities. Images appear, such as scenes from the Chinese past or from traditional landscape painting. Partially covered in a milky cloudiness, they are brought together with motifs of completely different, often Western, subjects. Young speculates on his lack of a spiritual homeland: “If I came from mainland China, perhaps from Beijing or Shanghai, I could at least make a connection with the rich history of those places,” he said. “But I come from Hong Kong.”
The artist is best known for his ‘double-ground paintings’ in which he combines digital printing techniques with oil painting. At the heart of his current work in progress – which Young is to call Buddha’s ray in reference to his experience on the plane – is the idea of remembrance. While researching the Nanjing Massacre, Young came upon the book, The Rape of Nanking, published in 1997, by Chinese-American historian and journalist Iris Chang. Inspired by the stories told by her grandparents, who themselves survived the massacre, Chang – then not yet 30 – went on months-long research trips to find the victims and the perpetrators of Nanjing. She spoke with many women who – often for the first time – told of the terrible suffering they endured. The charismatic Chang even managed to get former Japanese soldiers to talk about the rapes they committed against women and children. A third perspective opened up in the conversations with European and American representatives of what was known as the Nanjing Safety Zone, whose most important defender was Rabe.
It is also thanks to Chang that Rabe’s diaries have not been forgotten. She got in touch with Rabe’s son in the small town of Ottenau in southwest Germany. He had been considering disposing of the dusty old books. The same year, the former German ambassador to China, Erwin Wickert, turned his attention to the papers, publishing the diaries along with other contemporary documents in John Rabe. Der gute Deutsche von Nanking (published 1998 in the U.S. as The Good Man of Nanking). As Young speaks with great respect about Chang’s work and her efforts to stop the past from being forgotten, his voice is heavy with sorrow. Chang was found in her car on a California highway on Nov. 9, 2004, with a gunshot wound to the head. She was 36. The cause of death was ruled a suicide – Chang had a long history of depression.
Young says his project is a balancing act when it comes to the way one considers “one of the darkest days in history, Dec. 13, 1937” from a Chinese perspective. By making Rabe the hero, by following up his history during the war and his time in Berlin after the war, and by talking to Rabe’s family about how they remember him, Young seeks something with which to counter the sorrow and bitterness. “Instead of torpor, there should be a dynamic work of remembrance,” said Young.
How that work will ultimately look, how this detective story may be visualized, is still unclear. “The project has new dimensions for me as well,” said Young. “After all, I am moving between my place of birth, Hong Kong, my current home Melbourne, Nanjing and Berlin. In December, I visited Rabe’s grandson in Heidelberg. Who knows where my research might take me.” He added that he is allowing himself a year for the project. He details his travels through notes and photographs. And sometime in the next few months, Young is certain, it will become clear how all these can be brought together in one work. Leisure as the basic tenor of creating art, memory as the slow river of thought: contemporary art that refuses to be bound by the fast pace of the art market. Young says goodbye and heads off to research in Berlin.
First published: The Asia Pacific Times. A monthly newspaper from Germany, 2008-03
