Just Dharma is an installation work created by Jason Lim for the Singapore Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. Weighing quarter of a tonne, measuring 4.5 meters long by 1.5 meters wide, consisting of 1,800 individually handmade translucent unglazed porcelain lotuses, with a light bulb installed in each pistil, the artwork was suspended from the ceiling by threads and electrical cords – almost like a chandelier. The video titled Just Dharma captures the performance enacted by the artist on the opening evening of the Pavilion, when the ‘chandelier’ was dropped to the ground as ceremonial aphorism. Traditionally, clay has always been considered a craft medium with mostly utilitarian nature. Lim, however, has taken such claims to task, challenges such conservatism, shifting assumptions about ceramics as a discipline, pushing its potential as a critical media in installation and performance art. The video, Just Dharma, captures this interstitial moment of interweaving ‘objectivity’ and ‘performativity’, capturing a moment in the oeuvre of the as he utilizes the ‘nature ‘of ceramics, its dexterity, textural hardness, as well as, brittleness, in expressing the dual attributes of ‘hope’ and its regenerative flipside – the ruinous.
