In Reverence to the Feminine : Grace Jin | Guanyin in Love

Guanyin in Love, Grace Jin, 2023, Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, 36 x 64"

$1998

Artist Statement

Based in San Francisco | unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land

Grace Jin was born in Ohio but raised in rural Zhejiang, China by her grandparents, a
traditional Chinese medicine physician and Chinese calligrapher. She is an artist and
medical student based in San Francisco, working in painting, calligraphy, and installation.
Grace’s practice in art, just as in medicine, is a ritual quest for healing–to soften pain, caress grief, alchemize memory, transform suffering, combining studies of medicine, ancestral spirituality, mythology, decolonial theory and radical feminist literature to create new worlds of rapture and collective liberation.

Guanyin in Love

Audre Lorde said that Eros, born of chaos, the personification of love and lifeforce of women, has a profound power to liberate us from suffering and self-negation. Against forces which seek to own my body, diminish my desires, I summon Guanyin—the bodhisattva of compassion who frees all sentient beings from illusory hells—in an insurgent dance against banishment, a whirlwind of celestial love, unfettered freedom and rapture. Guanyin in Love responds to “Circle of the Lustful: Paolo and Francesca”, William Blake’s illustration of Dante’s Inferno, melding Christian and Buddhist imagery of punishment and salvation with Ming dynasty Chinese erotic art.