Lu Yangâs DOKU avatar projected in a metallic, scroll-lined environment.” width=”970″ height=”728″ data-caption=’An installation view of Lu Yang’s “DOKU! DOKU! DOKU!: samsara.exe” at New York’s Amant Foundation. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>Courtesy the artist and Amant, Brooklyn, NY Photo: New Document.</span>’>
In just a few years, Lu Yang has risen to international prominence with an incisive digital practice operating at the intersection of technology, Buddhist philosophy, archetypal symbolism and humanist-futurist speculation. The Tokyo- and Shanghai-based artist has recently held solo exhibitions at leading institutions including Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, MUDEC in Milan, Kunsthalle Basel, Berlin’s Palais Populaire, ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Kunstpalais Erlangen and MOCA Cleveland, among others. His work was also featured in the Venice Biennale in both 2015 and 2022, as well as in numerous biennials and triennials worldwide.
With his exhibition “DOKU! DOKU! DOKU!: samsara.exe” at the Amant Foundation in New York—which, remarkably, marks his first major institutional show in the city—and his presentation of DOKU Pieces (2023) on the High Line earlier in September as part of CHANEL’s Works from the Window initiative, Observer spoke with the artist about the ideas that make his work so urgent and resonant in this era of increasingly integrated technocivilization, where the technosphere and biosphere converge even as we lose touch with the archetypal, mythical and spiritual dimensions of existence.
What makes Lu Yang’s practice so striking is the way he has pioneered the blurred space between and the inevitable fusion of human and digital consciousness. Working at the nexus of spiritual meditation, neuroscientific research and technological mediation, Yang approaches these realms with a visionary sensibility far ahead of its time—one that feels especially prescient now that the full potential and mounting perils of A.I. have entered daily life, often appropriating or dominating humanity’s own powers of imagination and creation.
When Yang spoke with Observer, he said he had never felt uneasy about the so-called intersections between digital and human consciousness. “There are far more frightening things in this world than digital consciousness,” he said. “In the Buddhist view, the suffering of samsaric existence and the ignorance of sentient beings are what is truly terrifying. By comparison, the exploration of digital consciousness is more like humanity creating ‘illusions within illusions.’”
At the core of Yang’s inquiry lies both a question and a call for awareness about the very fabric of our notions of reality and identity—a call that feels increasingly urgent as advancing technologies erode the boundaries between what is real and what is fabricated, what is factual and what is imagined. Through computer-generated imagery, game engines and motion-capture technology, Yang embraces both the “illusion” and the generative potential of the virtual realm, transforming digital images into a fluid, shape-shifting space for an ongoing existential, spiritual and philosophical meditation on the nature and destiny of human existence in the universe.
DOKU: a digital reincarnation beyond the single self
The central conceptual and visual anchor in much of Yang’s work is DOKU, Lu Yang’s ongoing avatar and digital alter ego through which he explores identity, reincarnation, embodiment and the “post-human” or digital self. DOKU serves as both the vehicle and the channel for examining these questions beyond the notion of self or any biographical attachment. The avatar “is not simply a digital character, but a long-term experimental ground for me to question the nature of ‘existence’ and ‘self,’” Yang said.
The name DOKU is a shortened version of the Japanese Dokusho Dokushi, meaning “we are born alone, we die alone,” which encapsulates much of Lu Yang’s worldview. It is rooted in Buddhist philosophy and the notion of anattā (non-self), which holds that nothing is fixed, permanent or unchanging. All is in continuous, vital transformation that allows the universe to perpetuate its cycles. “The fragility and transience of the physical body always remind us that the boundaries of identity are unstable,” Yang reflected. “When I extend this inquiry into digital space, DOKU becomes a symbolic incarnation that can appear in multiple scenarios and forms, yet never with a fixed essence.”
Opening the possibility of both a “digital shell” and a “digital reincarnation” of the self, Yang’s works destabilize identity through avatars, multiplicity, disintegration and metamorphosis. In DOKU the Flow (2024), one of three feature-length video works on view at Amant from the ongoing DOKU cycle, the avatar moves not toward self-realization but toward endless dissolution, rejecting the possibility of any stable essence.
In the same space, with DOKU the Self (2022), this exploration of embodiment and disembodiment unfolds between the physical and the virtual, suggesting multiple simultaneous existences in a cyclical alternation of birth, memory, transformation and reincarnation—new forms, new times and new spaces beyond the fixed notion of human individuality.
In DOKU Pieces (2023), presented earlier on the High Line as part of the CHANEL commission, Lu Yang introduces six reincarnations of the artist’s digital avatar, DOKU. Each represents one of the six realms of existence in Buddhism: Heaven, Asura, Human, Animal, Hungry Ghost and Hell. Among these realms, Heaven, Asura and Human are considered virtuous, while Animal, Hungry Ghost and Hell belong to the afflicted realms. One’s karmic actions determine the cycle of reincarnation, which now finds new expression through the digital.
For Yang, however, this is not a fantasy of computer-based immortality. “These worlds and heightened virtual consciousness,” he said. “They are projections rather than escapes. Digital consciousness is just another layer of illusion. What we truly need to confront is how to recognize and transcend our own attachments.”
From this arises Yang’s deliberate detachment from the very notions of creator and authorship, which he explores most clearly in DOKU the Creator (2025), an epic digital narration first shown at Art Basel Hong Kong and now on view in Amant’s black box theater. Here, Yang stages an odyssey of endless bodily transformations, merging with natural elements and flowing between digital simulation and physical limitation in a continuous cycle of creation, generation, transformation and extinction, where matter dissipates only to reincarnate as data. The exhibition’s subtitle, samsara.exe, treats reincarnation as a running executable file—an infinite loop in which identities load, dissolve and reload.
For Yang, this digital simulation functions as metaphor, revealing that identity is never static but always in motion. “Whether through the body or a digital avatar, what we call ‘self’ is always an interface arising under certain conditions, revealing that existence is not something solid but a continuous metamorphosis,” he said.
Mythopoiesis for a cosmology in virtual space
What interests Yang most are the philosophical insights behind this transformation. “When viewers watch DOKU shift and recur across different spaces, they are also witnessing the process of self being generated and dissolved. DOKU does not offer a fixed answer but an open possibility: the question of ‘who am I?’ is never resolved once and for all—it remains a moving trajectory across realities.”
In Yang’s work, this idea of “digital reincarnation” is not an escape from mortality but a reflective mirror. “This allows us to see the fragility, transience and multiplicity of self and to recognize that what truly matters is not how to transcend the body, but how to understand the boundless transformations that define existence itself,” he said.
Still, in his view, digital life will never truly possess the same mindstream as human beings. In Buddhist understanding, he explained, consciousness is not a product of the physical brain—it is neither confined to its structure nor reducible to biological neural activity. “The brain functions more like a storage and computational device, somewhat similar to the hardware of digital life. Consciousness itself does not reside there; its manifestation arises dependently and is without inherent essence.”
By creating imaginary virtual worlds and navigating them through a virtual persona, Lu Yang expands the possibilities of human consciousness beyond its preordained limits, activating its imaginative capacity to see beyond the present and the singular. His inquiry engages with these questions on a plane of universality and cosmic synchronicity, beyond the physical and cognitive boundaries of space and time that can constrain human perception.
In this sense, Lu Yang does not treat digital technology merely as a tool; it is fully integrated into the metaphysical framework that underpins his work. Technology becomes a medium for channeling vision and illumination—an access point to a more porous state where body, avatar, memory, consciousness and algorithmic systems merge.
Yang’s continuous weaving of game-like and virtual narrative structures can be read as an act of mythopoiesis—an attempt to construct a personal cosmology that helps us envision the future through the expanded imaginative potential enabled by new technologies, while also drawing from the collective unconscious of ancient belief systems and the vast symbolic archive of humanity now accessible through A.I.
His works are dense with symbologies and references to Chinese ancestral spirituality and older symbols that intersect with archetypes from other cultures. He explained that most of these derive from Buddhist, and especially Tibetan, traditions and arise naturally from his practice. They are not ornamental but integral to his working process. Key recurring elements include the Wheel of Life, peaceful and wrathful deities, the charnel ground, the bardo and mudras. “I use these elements as a natural outpouring—especially the Wheel of Life, whose motif carries a highly intricate Buddhist philosophical worldview, rich and complex. Only by presenting that structure can one unfold and articulate each specific motif in turn.”
However, Yang also emphasizes that these symbols exist beyond any notion of time; they belong to an atemporal continuum of collective and universal consciousness. “I don’t regard anything as ‘ancient’ or not—any wisdom that proves useful is equal and non-dual, beyond temporal and spatial limits,” he explained. “I care less about where it comes from than whether it can genuinely shift perception and the state of mind.”
Technology as ritual
Through his digital avatar, Yang enacts something akin to a shamanic ritual—what contemporary discourse might call a form of “digital shamanism.” Yet he is quick to note that he never intended to define his work in such terms. “I simply make the work that needs to be made,” he said, explaining that categorization typically occurs later, by others. “I may just have been born into this era, encountered Buddhism early and became a Buddhist, made the kind of work I make and met scholars who prefer that term—what you see is a contingent constellation of causes and conditions,” he added.
The ominous visions behind his works emerge through a process of digital meditation and creation. Working with A.I. deepens his exploration of the unknown and the obliterated, unearthing truths inaccessible in ordinary life. Yet this mythopoietic storytelling is never premeditated; it unfolds organically as he attunes to other dimensions. “The process of inspiration for my works always happens in an instant or within a very short span of time,” Yang explained. For example, as he meditates on a cliffside for one or two hours, visions naturally emerge. “Sometimes I cannot even tell whether they arise from my own mind or are messages from the universe. In that moment, the entire framework and structure of the work appears with striking clarity, and I archive it within my mind,” he said, recalling a conversation with monk and writer Shoukei Matsumoto, where they discovered that their ways of receiving inspiration were remarkably similar. “Sometimes it is simply about waiting for inspiration to arise on its own, rather than actively chasing it.”
Before production, Yang carefully organizes these visions. If any part becomes blurred in memory, he returns to meditation to access that “archived point” and retrieve the information. Because his process unfolds in the tension between meditative surrender and rational control, he never alters the framework once inspiration has manifested. “I consider such alteration a desecration of the inspiration or the message itself,” he said. “After that initial moment, I become a servant to the vision, bound to realize it faithfully.”
In this process, A.I. serves only as a tool and an assistant. “It helps realize the initial appearance and does not rewrite the skeleton of the work. It can support me, but it will never—and must never—interfere with my work’s core philosophy or structural framework.”
Yang describes the spirituality in his work as a method for quieting noise so that phenomena may reveal themselves: “I organize attention through looping rhythms, recurring motifs and scale shifts. When a viewer’s breath syncs with the cadence of the work, a sense of ritual arises on its own.”
Although Yang’s answers can be elusive as well as insightful, it’s clear he sees himself as a conduit for essential truths and universal messages—wisdom he believes the world urgently needs in this time of turmoil and uncertainty. “DOKU is not a priest but a vehicle/mirror,” he said. What becomes most evident is his vow to use his work to convey wisdom he believes can genuinely help the world. “As an individual facing today’s wars and geopolitical complexity—witnessing so much suffering—I often feel powerless and sad; but I refuse to remain there. I turn that feeling into a direction for making—opening a small, experiential pocket of clarity amid the noise. Even if it touches only one person or clarifies a single moment, it is worth it. Over a longer horizon, that clarity continues to work within a life—not as loud diffusion, but as a quiet and durable effect.”
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