Snake Escapes from the Mouth of Garuda Who is Biting to Kill Herring

One of Wu Jian’an’s core methodologies for his artistic creations is to find a connection between the individual spiritual world and current social problems from the local cultural traditions. Subsequently, the artist converts the connection into unique, vibrant visual art works with rich connotations through experimental use of numerous artistic materials and languages.

“Tale of the Green Herring” is the culmination of Wu’s study on several different literary versions of “The Legend of the White Snake”. It is a collage that consists of seven large frames of color waxed paper cuts with a connected plot line that constitutes a prequel of the famed story. It is an attempt at the re-creation of a classic tale by injecting current cultural imagination.

The sixth frame shows “Snake Escapes from the Mouth of Garuda Biting to Kill Herring”. When the green herring was taking the form of fish, human and bird, the real Garuda appeared from nowhere and killed it. In the Buddhist scripture “Dīrgha Āgama-Nineteenth Volume”, it is said that the Garuda consumed a large snake and five hundred small snakes daily. On the day that it ate the green herring, a giant snake escaped from the Garuda’s beak…