Yang sheng is a Chinese expression which is translated as vital nourishment, or “nourishing life.” Yang Sheng was exhaustively researched by possibly the world’s first anarchist, Zhuangzhi (contemporary to Aristotle). Through deepening my understanding of this term’s meanings and connotation, I am further achieving what I seek to create as a model for my artistic work and research practice. How can art feed the whole of a life? How can one’s vocation feed the art, feed the life, the intellect, the personal practice, friendship, kinship, the body-person, the inquiry, in community, in mutualism? What does it mean to let the intention be coherence, that the various parts of living all feed the whole? As stated by Sabine Williams: “in balance with the macrocosm for the benefit of the individual body, the body of the family, the body politic, and the body of the cosmos.” Vital Nourishment includes not solely a personal perspective, but the unity of mental, ecological, social, aesthetic, and personal choices.
