From Confucius to Christ

May 10, 2022 – July 14, 2022
Yeh Art Gallery

8000 Utopia Pkwy
Jamaica, NY

Image: Wu Jian’an, Nirvana of the White Ape, 2014. Colored wax on wood, 70 3/4 x 98 1/2 inches. Courtesy Chambers Fine Art.

Image: Wu Jian’an, Nirvana of the White Ape, 2014. Colored wax on wood, 70 3/4 x 98 1/2 inches. Courtesy Chambers Fine Art.

The Yeh Art Gallery, St. John’s University is pleased to announce From Confucius to Christ, a group exhibition of contemporary artists working with spirituality, reglion, and belief. Participating artists include Wu Jian’an, Brittany Adeline King, Lu Zhang, Martha Tuttle, Kadar Brock, Asha Dangol, Brian Michael Reed, Otani Workshop, Joseph Liatela, Hallie McNeill, Ashmina Ranjit, and Monsieur Zohore.

The title of the exhibition comes from a 1952 “spiritual autobiography” by Dr. Paul Sih, the founder of the Yeh Art Gallery’s building, Sun Yet Sen Memorial Hall. In this book, Sih proposes that China’s historical tradition of Confucianist ethics paved the way for not only his own conversion, but Communist China’s future embrace of the Christian faith. “We Chinese,” Sih writes, “must take Confucius as our point of departure…to arrive at Christ.”

On the occasion of this exhibition, the Yeh Art Gallery becomes a space where a diversity of belief systems are suspended together in consonance, from Buddhism to Christianity. The exhibition inaugurates a dialogue, creating space so that we may listen to a chorus of belief systems and perspectives, ultimately emphasizing how spirituality and philosophy remain enduring subjects for contemporary artists.