The Blind Men and
the Elephant

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”
― William Blake.

In the classic Buddhist story "Blind Man And An Elephant," four blind men who had never seen an elephant before, were asked to touch the elephant and describe what it is based on their own limited knowledge. To this story, the author adds the "Mirror Kingdom" as a background and the omniscient "King Mirror" as a character. The author deconstructs objects into shapes and uses the "patchwork" of shapes to reflect the fluidity of the story, and uses four different shapes to represent the elephant as perceived by the four blind men. The story does not stop after the King Mirror gets four answers, but keeps changing like a kaleidoscope, endlessly.

What the author wants to express is that "each person gets a limited answer through his own path, but even this limited answer has infinite possibilities. We can all gradually approach the truth of the world."
 
English Samples Available

^{Text: Xiao Long Hua 
Illustration: Xiao Long Hua
Published by Beijing Yuchen Culture, Mar. 2022
260mm*250mm
23 Pages
All Rights Available}

Xiao Long Hua is an artist living in Shanghai. He not only draws, but also creates installation art and sculpture. He specialises in breaking the original constraints of materials and building new possibilities in space.