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Head of Buddha |
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ThailandMon style, late 8th-9th century Stucco H. 6 in. (15.2 cm); 1979.78 |
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Yong Soon Min Even though it is made of rough stucco, the head is exquisite. Its fullness and roundness of features suggest strong feminine qualities. Moreover, these features look familiar and bear startling resemblance to some women I know, conferring to this work an incredible sense of contemporaneity and immediacy. The severed head also brings to mind an installation project of a fellow artist, Dinh Le, that involves headless Buddha figures prevalent in the East coupled with numerous Buddha heads found in prominent Western collections and the implications of Western hegemony underlying this situation. |