“Mandala of Insanity” is representative of Han Mengyun’s art practice and of the turn it took in 2019, when she started to investigate the history of textile and to explore its artistic potential through her work. Mandala, meaning “circle", or “completeness” in Sanskrit, was a visual representation of the universe and was used as an aid to meditation. It was further extrapolated by Carl Jung in his modern Western analytical psychology. Han Mengyun’s deconstruction and reconfiguration of the ornamental component of ancient art originates from her critique of the normative art historical discourse that has trivialized the role of ornamentation, which is an integral device to visualize cosmology. In the painting, the circular structure is enclosed by the artist’s block printed patterns which evolve into a space that seems to extend infinitely outward. New symbols and imageries are generated at the juncture of the artist’s enquiries of history, psychology, and religion. The cosmological structure borrowed by the caisson ceiling of Buddhist caves is manifested in Han Mengyun’s imaginative refashioning of ancient motifs, which refuse to follow the course of the perfect circle. If the mandala serves to describe the condition of the cosmos, Mandala of Insanity depicts a contemporary world steeped in disquietude and precarity, and the human psyche dwelling within.

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