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During the Tang Dynasty, the phrase wansuì (萬歲), literally ‘ten thousand years’, came to be used exclusively to address the emperor: ‘Wú huáng wànsuì, wànsuì, wànwànsuì’ (吾皇萬歲，萬歲，萬萬歲) - literally, ‘[May] the Emperor [live and reign for] ten thousand years, ten thousand years, ten thousand of ten thousand years’.
Because of their gender, empresses were addressed with the lesser ‘thousand years’ (千歲) until the Empress Dowager Cixi, the de facto supreme ruler of China from 1861 to 1908, was accorded the full ‘ten thousand years’ in recognition of her achievements equal to any man.
Lana Wànsuì
or
Ten Thousand Years of Lana Wachowski
is intended as a portrait of the artist's friend, filmmaker and trans rights advocate Lana Wachowski.
The artwork, designed for digital billboards and the internet, also draws inspiration from the history of science fiction (the example illustrated refers to H.G. Wells' 1901 novel,
The First Men in the Moon).
The impetus for the work is summarised by the artist in a journal entry:
The self-evident fact that your feeling directs events - fate, the lives of other people, the built landscapes of cities, river courses.
I feel like I am going on a pilgrimage to see a holy figure, or to met Gertrude Stein. Like climbing a mountain to a holy citadel, to see something beautiful and courageous and epic and truthful.
Strangely, Lana Wachowski like a goddess, come down to earth in a miraculous vision of sacred truth, making it all possible…
Something to ring down the ages - messages of compasson and connection, of visibility and truth - a portrait that will last for 10,000 years...
