EVENT: LU YANG’S THE GREAT ADVENTURE OF MATERIAL WORLD (SEPTEMBER 26 2025–MARCH 25 2026, NEW YORK)
The Great Adventure of Material World (2019–2020)
Curated by Regina Harsanyi
September 26, 2025 – March 22, 2026
Museum of the Moving Image, Jane Henson Amphitheater
36-01 35 Ave, Astoria, NY 11106
The Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) will present The Great Adventure of Material World (2019–2020) by Lu Yang, marking the first time this project is exhibited in a U.S. museum. Widely regarded as one of the artist’s most ambitious undertakings, the work blends Buddhist cosmology with the visual logics of video games, anime, and science fiction.
At the centre of the piece is the androgynous avatar Material World Knight, who journeys through cycles of conflict, transformation, and renewal that echo samsara—the ceaseless rhythm of birth, death, and rebirth. Visitors can encounter the work in two formats: as a projected single-channel film or as the interactive The Great Adventure of Material World–Game Film (2020). In the latter, players guide Material World Knight through six planes of the bardo, the transitional state between death and rebirth, confronting trials that question attachment, desire, and the illusion of selfhood. Populated by characters and motifs from Lu Yang’s earlier works (2011–2019), the project eschews conventional progression and reward, instead staging cycles of destruction and renewal.
Curated by Regina Harsanyi, Associate Curator of Media Arts at MoMI, the exhibition situates Lu Yang within a broader exploration of simulation, interactivity, and spirituality in contemporary moving image art. It coincides with Lu Yang: DOKU! DOKU! DOKU!: samsara.exe at Amant, Brooklyn, extending the artist’s presence across New York.
Born in Shanghai and currently based in Tokyo, Lu Yang has become one of the most prominent voices in media art to emerge from China in the last decade. Their practice consistently merges religious cosmologies with contemporary technologies of simulation. Projects such as UterusMan (2013), Delusional Mandala (2015), and the long-running DOKU series (2019–) deploy game engines, motion capture, and 3D animation to construct elaborate digital avatars that destabilise fixed notions of gender, identity, and embodiment.
The Material World cycle occupies a pivotal place in this trajectory, amplifying Lu Yang’s interest in Buddhist philosophy while formalising the integration of interactive gameplay into their moving image installations. Material World Knight is less a “character” than a philosophical vessel, embodying the artist’s exploration of the body as transient, the self as process, and consciousness as endlessly mutable. By employing the aesthetics of gaming, anime, and cybernetics, Lu Yang translates metaphysical questions into experiential simulations.
With this U.S. premiere, MoMI brings into focus not only Lu Yang’s synthesis of Eastern philosophy and global pop aesthetics, but also the central role of gaming logics in shaping contemporary art’s engagement with questions of life, death, and digital reincarnation.
Born in Shanghai and currently based in Tokyo, Lu Yang has become one of the most prominent voices in media art to emerge from China in the last decade. Their practice consistently merges religious cosmologies with contemporary technologies of simulation. Projects such as UterusMan (2013), Delusional Mandala (2015), and the long-running DOKU series (2019–) deploy game engines, motion capture, and 3D animation to construct elaborate digital avatars that destabilise fixed notions of gender, identity, and embodiment.
The Material World cycle occupies a pivotal place in this trajectory, amplifying Lu Yang’s interest in Buddhist philosophy while formalising the integration of interactive gameplay into their moving image installations. Material World Knight is less a “character” than a philosophical vessel, embodying the artist’s exploration of the body as transient, the self as process, and consciousness as endlessly mutable. By employing the aesthetics of gaming, anime, and cybernetics, Lu Yang translates metaphysical questions into experiential simulations.
With this U.S. premiere, MoMI brings into focus not only Lu Yang’s synthesis of Eastern philosophy and global pop aesthetics, but also the central role of gaming logics in shaping contemporary art’s engagement with questions of life, death, and digital reincarnation.
Read an excellent review by Eana Kim on Hyperallergic
Read an excellent review by Peter Kelly on WhiteHot magazine