Elsa Jin has long been captivated by the art of Dunhuang. In September 2016, she drove more than 7,000 kilometers round trip from the southernmost tip of China to reach Dunhuang, deep in the desert. She traveled along the 1,500-year-old Silk Road, heading west like a pilgrim, with the Han Dynasty Great Wall, built some 1,800 years earlier, running alongside her. The journey left a profound aesthetic impression on her, yet nothing moved her more than the Buddhist grottoes of Dunhuang.

These two works are Elsa Jin's love letter to Dunhuang. They draw inspiration from a Buddhist cave created 1,500 years ago. Artisans hollowed an entire mountain into a grotto and carved the Buddha directly into its rock walls. Monks lived inside, chanting and meditating day and night. Before the Buddha's ten-meter-tall face, the artisans also cut a skylight, so that light from the heavens would fall upon his face at every hour.