God Objects

“my Ethiopian friend Filagot told me the onion said Allah, and I was like omg, yes onion energy is god energy, so is the moon the garlic.”

’God Objects’ is a finger painting drawn by dragging the charred waxy wick of a candle. Yang drew these allium forms without knowing, revealing the forms after rotating the page to its final portrait orientation.

Inspired subconsciously by the significance of onions and garlic as spiritual motifs across cultures, particularly across myriad religious architectures, onion domes are popularly believed to symbolise burning candles - a reference back to the medium of candle wax.

Onions and garlic are both alliums that leave a strongly residual presence, like a spirit haunting the body, that simultaneously cleansing the body of bad bacteria, unseen demons to the immune system.
In Buddhist and Hindu culture, garlic and onion are rejected as their stimulatory effects towards emotional and sexual excitement are seen as pollutive, and undesirable.

The script inside the onion form coincidentally reads similar to ‘Allah’, in a coincidentally abstracted Arabic, revealing that words, particularly holy ones, have a felt sensation that guides the hand like a dance.

A3 size, 2020, burned candle wax on paper.
printed on Giclée Hahnemühle Bamboo

If you are interested in a framed version of this piece, click here.