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Anatomy of a Grotto Heaven 洞天解剖圖
detail
Noncorporeal soul 魂
Consciousness of potentials 意
Animal Soul 魄
prescribed fire
Guanyin Cave 觀音洞
Guanyin Cave 觀音洞
Bodhidharma Cave 达摩洞
Bodhidharma Cave 达摩洞
Dreams of spring in the apricot grove 杏林春夢
On the Absolute Sincerity 大医精诚
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Tiger protecting apricot grove 虎守杏林图

Painted with materia medica—iodine, an antiseptic, and anti-inflammatory herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine and textile dyeing—this body of work embodies a somatic reintegration of ancestral healing knowledge. My great-grandfather was a pastor and surgeon trained by British missionaries at the first Western hospital in China. My grandmother worked with barefoot doctors during the Cultural Revolution, providing primary care in rural Zhejiang while practicing sutra calligraphy as nightly ritual.  

Drawing from the Huangdi Neijing (Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor), a foundational Chinese medical text, reinterpreted through the embodied knowledge and labor of diasporic women, this work constitutes both research and prayer—for family members living with chronic pain and cancer, as well as for collective restoration. I propose an alternative canon: where scientific, spiritual, ecological, and feminist epistemologies coexist; where healing is not the absence of disease, but presence of connection.

Grace Jin © 2025.

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