Ding Yi: The Winding Path

Cui Cancan

In 2025, just two days after New Year’s Day, Nie Rongqing and I boarded a plane to Shanghai to meet and work with Ding Yi. I had deliberately scheduled our meeting for January 2 so I could spend New Year’s Day in Beijing.

A year earlier, when we decided to hold this exhibition, we set the opening for July in Kunming–because that’s the start of the mushroom season, the best and most delicious time in the city, infused with a fresh kind of illusion, in tune with the promises made by nature through rain, sunlight, soil, and air.

For the Naxi people, however, the most important festival of the year is “Naxi New Year,” which runs from the first to the seventh day of the first month in the Naxi calendar. It is the most grand and festive occasion of the year. After these days, they hold a “heaven-sacrifice” ceremony, which marks the real beginning of the year.

I think, were it not for the influence and dominance of Western civilization, New Year’s Day and the Gregorian calendar would matter little to many regions. The Han have their own Spring Festival and a 12-year cycle. Tibetans have the Tibetan calendar. Arabs follow the Islamic calendar, and Indians, the Hindu calendar. These different calendrical systems arise from distinct cosmologies and conceptions of nature–each a different response to how the universe and fate are formed.

In 2024, Ding Yi traveled three times to the ancient Naxi region of Yunnan. He was deeply drawn to the animism and nature worship of this ancient civilization, its notion of life returning to ancestral lands, the mysterious Twenty-Eight Mansions, and the grand pictorial scroll The Road to Heaven, which describes the soul’s journey. Ding Yi decided to make Naxi and Dongba culture the central direction of this exhibition.

The exhibition is divided into six sections and held across two art institutions. At Contemporary Gallery Kunming, new works by Ding Yi are shown, inspired by The Road to Heaven, the Twenty-Eight Mansions, the traditional Dongba paper, and the Hengduan Mountains. The section “The Recurring Journey” offers a retrospective glimpse into Ding Yi’s work from 1987 to the present, hoping to present the 38-year-long winding road of the “cross” symbol. At the Anthropology Museum of Yunnan University, artifacts from the Naxi people are exhibited alongside Ding Yi’s travel sketches from his three visits to Naxi regions, as well as a documentary filmed by a Tibetan director, portraying the Naxi people’s journey back to their homeland.

These two venues offer two distinct contexts: one contemporary, one historical/anthropological/archaeological. They also present two different positions: a shift from “them” to “us”; from a gaze that looks down on the Naxi, to one that looks up in reverence. These transformations point to the heart of the exhibition: how to find a third path between East and West–not merely the tail end of Western modernism and abstract art, nor a simple historical reflection of a particular region.

The Winding Path is Ding Yi’s path back to the origins of abstract spirit; it is also his search for inspiration–toward the highlands, the peaks, the ancient, and the natural. Just like the Naxi people, thousands of years ago, who followed the guidance of the North Star from the distant north, arriving here and formulating their own calendar and script along the way.

“Journeying” and “winding upward” have become Ding Yi’s most important working methods in recent years, and they mark a significant turning point in the evolution of his “cross” symbol. Unlike site-specific art that often assumes a top-down stance, the “winding path” is a path that seeks revelation, tempers the soul, and reconstructs the subject. It is in this sense that we can understand what Ding Yi means by “looking up.”

In certain respects, the spiritual aspiration behind Ding Yi’s The Winding Path points toward the premodern. In 1987, Ding Yi began his work with the “cross” motif, originating from modernism. In the 1990s, he entered a conceptualist phase, formulating the principle that the “cross” would be his sole content and form. Yet, he resisted sacrificing the sensuous world, seeking instead to preserve the textures of history and reality.

After 2000, shaped by the urbanization of Shanghai, Ding Yi returned to the symbolic resonance of the “cross” within reality. By 2021, through journeys to Lhasa, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Ningbo, and Kunming, he once again reconnected with the energy of the classical and the mythic. But The Winding Path has no terminus–it sways fiercely between the poles of locality and globalization. Ding Yi searches for the primal wisdom of religious philosophy and the Eastern path. Everything returns in cycles: each transformation of the “cross” is a reincarnation in the life of the “cross” itself.

The Road to Heaven, this ancient mythic painting, becomes the vessel that ferries the “cross” from modernism into conceptualism, then into the premodern. It climbs, layer by layer, over nine black mountains, from the human world to the divine realm. Or rather, through Ding Yi’s winding ascent, these “crosses” have reestablished a connection with the living world: with human history, human origins, human loss, and the relationship between humans and ancient land, tradition, and nature. Ding Yi knows well that only by fulfilling the need for reconciliation between humanity and nature can we approach truth and the origin of the cosmos.

And yet, these ancient civilizations today resemble faint fireflies in the night. With sensitivity, devotion, and reverence, Ding Yi uses the faint glow of the “cross” to illuminate the winding path.

The Road to Heaven

“The truth of art is what matters most; form itself is only the path.”

– Ding Yi

The Road to Heaven opens the exhibition–it is the point of departure, the center, and the thematic core.

Originally, The Road to Heaven was a long scroll painting used in Naxi Dongba rituals for funerals and the deliverance of souls. Typically 10 to 20 meters in length, it depicts the three realms of ghosts, humans, and gods, populated by hundreds of figures–divine, human, ghostly, and beastly. Its purpose was to guide the deceased, under the direction of the Dongba priest, through the many torments of the Underworld, allowing them to be reborn as humans, and then ascend to the divine realm, traversing the long road of thirty-three celestial layers, finally returning to the “land of ancestors.”

The Road to Heaven emerged from the Naxi’s unique cosmology, their views on nature, life, and death. The tales of indulgence and punishment within it served as life principles and moral teachings. Its animism, nature worship, ancestor veneration, and the foundational belief that “the great nature and humans are brothers” form the core of Dongba religion, guiding the rites of this spiritual journey.

Such a story has also given rise to a unique artistic form. The first time Ding Yi saw the original scroll, he was deeply moved. It was at that moment he decided to depict the content of the scroll using his signature “cross” motif, marking the beginning of his exhibition work. But how would he depict it? And how could the “cross” relate to The Road to Heaven scroll?

At first, Ding Yi attempted to alter the traditional format by creating a horizontal scroll. However, after completing the work, he specifically consulted with Dongba cultural expert Bao Jiang. Bao affirmed the compatibility between Ding Yi’s work and the Dongba cosmology of the three realms and suggested that Ding Yi create another version as a vertical scroll. Drawing on his experiences from several journeys, investigations, and studies, Ding Yi subsequently produced a 10.79-meter-long scroll.

To better approach the precise and meticulous composition, and the texture of pigments in the original scroll, Ding Yi painted on Dongba paper provided by an elder Dongba, using acrylic and water-soluble colored pencils. The mysterious and unfathomable world in The Road to Heaven scroll offered a generative context for the abstract and ever-changing “cross” motif, allowing it to evolve from the archetype into a complex and non-verbal visual experience. This type of painting, existing between religious iconography and abstract art, formed a new state through the union of The Road to Heaven scroll and the “cross”–it allows one to perceive two worlds simultaneously, yet not separate them on the level of sensation. It is a spiritual experience, one in which you cannot distinguish whether the “revelation” is physical or psychological.

The “cross” must traverse nine great mountains in order to continue onward and attain new possibilities–just like generations of Dongba who must repeatedly redraw the same story. When a new Dongba picks up the brush, the story takes on new forms and appearances. It mirrors the story of humanity itself, subtly revealing each person’s warmth, experience, wisdom, and voice. It also resembles the endlessly recurring “cross” in Ding Yi’s paintings: while they share similar physical forms, they are endowed with different lives through variation in form, material, emotion, and narrative.

The meaning of religious painting is not to produce images or language, but to offer revelation. Why are these Dongba priests–who have no formal artistic training–able to create such moving paintings? It is simply because their reverence and piety infuse the act of painting, treating the story as the ultimate vehicle for the salvation of life. This is entirely aligned with Ding Yi’s practice. As Ding Yi puts it: “Art helps me explore what the purpose of life really is. Art has a sense of eternity, and my sincerity and immersion in it are my form of faith.”

In The Road to Heaven scroll, the “cross” is an element, a content, and a path toward the divine. Much like the Naxi people’s ancient cosmology, in which “Qi” (energy) and “water” are the fundamental substances of the universe, the dynamic relationship between them gives rise to all things–gods, ghosts, and humans–through the tensions between truth and falsehood, material and immaterial, black and white, good and evil. In the painting, the “cross” assumes the same function: as “good,” it leads to the heaven; as “evil,” it leads to the underworld. When situated between good and evil, truth and falsehood, material and immaterial, black and white–the “cross” constitutes the natural world.

“Appearance of Crosses” on Dongba Paper

Dongba paper was originally a special kind of paper used by Naxi Dongba priests to transcribe Dongba scriptures and paint Dongba images. Its raw material comes from the bark of a plant called wāndāi in the Naxi language, botanically classified in the Thymelaeaceae family as Wikstroemia canescens. This plant is native to the region and commonly grows around 2,000 meters above sea level in the Jinsha River valleys, mountainous areas, and rocky, impoverished soils.

Interestingly, the plant also has natural properties that repel insects and prevent decay. It is said to be capable of lasting a thousand years without rotting. According to legend, many ancient Buddhist scriptures were also written on Dongba paper. The process of making Dongba paper is especially intricate: from collecting raw materials, drying, soaking, steaming, washing, and repeated pounding, to the final stages of pouring, pressing, and drying the paper. Its complex production and unique natural ingredients have allowed it to be passed down for millennia, making it one of the world’s oldest and most original “living fossils” of handmade papermaking.

Choosing Dongba paper also means choosing a cultural stance–an adherence to ancient values. Much like Korean Dansaekhwa painters’ use of traditional Hanji paper, the “crosses” on Dongba paper are imbued with a distinct Dongba ambiance and meaning, forming a new kind of artistic spirit. Its thickness, coarse fibers, and durability lend it a sense of rustic simplicity, warmth, and straightforwardness. The way it absorbs pigment also introduces unexpected results to the colors of the “cross”. Likewise, the fact that it is purely handmade distances it from the monotony of machine-made modern paper, endowing it with a natural and primal charm absent from industrialized Western paper. Thus, Dongba paper brings the “cross” closer to human sensibility–each step radiates an ancient, mysterious aura.

In 1987, shortly after resigning from a printing factory, Ding Yi drew the first batch of “crosses” on a few sheets of paper. At that time, the “cross” was endowed with an almost industrial, rational, and precise character. Over 30 years later, Dongba paper now sends the “cross” into a realm of history that is ancient, primal, and full of sacred presence. Over these three decades, Ding Yi has experimented with and studied dozens of types of paper. He has painted on modified Chinese Xuan paper, Tibetan paper, Japanese paper, and Indian paper. Each kind of paper has its own texture, base, and tactile quality, which, in turn, interact with the “cross” to produce varying results–differences in color, texture, thickness, and absorption. These variations are not only formal but also emotional and spiritual, carrying the cultural identities of different papers, the emotional projections embedded in their craftsmanship, and their historical value.

Likewise, the works on paper hold a particularly important place in Ding Yi’s artistic practice. Unlike many artists who treat works on paper as sketches or fragments, Ding Yi assigns equal weight to this series as he does to his paintings. As a key thread in the evolution of the “cross” motif, it serves both as experimentation and refinement of his paintings, and as a vivid medium for rethinking the “cross” itself–a spiritual measure for its unfolding trajectory.

The Twenty-Eight Mansions

“Stars are scattered across the sky. Time is measured by the sun, for its movement determines the hours; the moon is the moon, and its body wanes; the month of the year shares the name with the moon.”

– From The Naxi Pictographic Text Compendium

The image of “starry skies” first appeared in Ding Yi’s work around the year 2000, during the height of China’s urbanization. At that time, Ding Yi used the “cross” to record the neon-lit nights of Shanghai’s metropolitan life. In 2021, Ding Yi made his third journey to Tibet, reaching the base camp of Mount Everest in the freezing cold. As night fell, a deep silence settled over Everest–everything else became secondary, his footsteps grew lighter, and only the suspended starry sky reminded him that he was still on Everest, or perhaps already in the universe. Back in his studio, Ding Yi repeatedly revisited this profound memory, eventually creating a series of works on Everest, the cosmos, and the starry sky. A year later, at sea level on the bay of Qingdao, he created an image of the “cross” at the intersection of sea and stars.

The same starry sky, seen from different locations and fates, gave rise to different astronomical calendars, shaping distinct cosmologies and views of nature for different peoples. The Twenty-Eight Mansions form the Naxi calendar–derived from ancestral observations of celestial movements, solar and lunar cycles, seasonal changes, and natural signs. The Naxi divided the sky into 28 regions, assigning each a Naxi name and forming a uniquely Naxi system of the Twenty-Eight Mansions.

The formation of this ancient calendar also has a long history. As descendants of the Diqiang people, the Naxi lived a nomadic, migratory life, relying on an extraordinary understanding of the Imperial Star (Polaris) and the Seven Sisters (Big Dipper) to guide them through a long and arduous migration. This cultivated a deep reverence for the stars, and every year, the Naxi hold star-worshipping rituals. Even in modern times, these celestial bodies remain supreme deities, embodying religious and divinatory functions.

The Twenty-Eight Mansions also gave rise to a philosophy distinct from other civilizations: How did the vast universe come into being? What was its original form, and how and when did life emerge? How did all things in the world take shape? The Naxi had their own answers: “Qi” and “water” were the primordial substances. In their opposition and interaction–between more and less, real and unreal, gathering and dispersing, presence and absence–they brought forth the splitting of heaven and earth, the emergence of gods and ghosts, and the creation of humans and all things.

The primitive yet dialectical materialism of the ancient Naxi echoes the languages and principles of modernism, abstract art, and formal generation. This is also the inspiration that the Twenty-Eight Mansions offer Ding Yi–a set of linguistic variables linked to the “cross.” Yet, unlike the starry skies of Shanghai, Tibet, and Qingdao, these star fields based on the Naxi system no longer connect with the earth. The paintings depict only abstract, mysterious symbols–older, in black and white, as if the world had not yet been given its boundaries or colors.

In some ways, by removing the land, these works come closer to a universal starry sky, approaching truths shared by all humanity. And this truth points to the shared idealism of the Twenty-Eight Mansions and of art itself: how matter can be transformed into spirit, how forms can be transformed into deities.

Hengduan Mountains

The Hengduan Mountains are located in the western parts of Sichuan, Yunnan, and eastern part of Tibet. They overlap with two of Ding Yi’s recent journeys–one to Tibet, and one to the ancient Naxi region. This area features rich and diverse landforms and is home to more than twenty ethnic groups. It is also a site of ancient ape fossils–one of the birthplaces of humankind.

Unlike most mountain ranges, the Hengduan system runs north to south. To the north of the mountain roads lies the ancestral land of the ancient Naxi people; to the south lies the current region where the Naxi people are concentrated. The towering mountains, acting as barriers, have allowed diverse cultures to coexist, while the interconnecting valleys and rivers have enabled slow, ongoing exchanges among different ways of life and culture. As a result, this region holds a unique reverence and emotional connection to “the mountains”.

For both the Naxi and Ding Yi, “mountains” possess life, will, and supernatural, mysterious power. The “sacred spaces” and “sacred landscapes” in Ding Yi’s works based on the Hengduan Mountains are carriers of this power. Yet, compared with the traditional concept of the “sacred mountain,” Ding Yi’s works display more complex and varied colors: topographic features drawn from geography rendered in “band-like” graphical formations; dazzling hues derived from everyday objects, clothing, and festivals; and the rich natural bounty of the Hengduan region–visions shaped by rare trees, strange flowers, and exotic herbs that seem like something out of a dream, or even psychedelic experiences produced by consuming wild foods like the delicate, ghostlike “poison mushrooms.”

These psychedelic colors and the rhythm, like that of celestial music, seem to form an archive of the spirit of nature and plants, fusing spirituality, science, psychology, and geometry. This reminds me of another historical moment: the “spiritual journeys” across the United States in the 1960s. Guided by jazz, the cosmos, atomic theory, and Zen Buddhism, they rejected modernity, the city, and the endless game of capitalism. They yearned to return to nature, to the spiritual motherland, to the most primal life of the soul.

Every year during the first, sixth, and seventh lunar months, the Naxi people– scattered across places like Youmi Village and the shores of Lugu Lake–hold various forms of “mountain god festivals.” People travel from all directions to gather at the foot of the mountain, chanting scriptures through the night, singing ancient songs, and dancing around bonfires. This return of life to nature is the foundation of the Naxi philosophy and their understanding of life’s meaning. The Naxi consider the north as the direction of origin and reverence– this is their root, and under the guidance of the Dongba priests, the souls of the dead return to this “ancestral land.”

Three Journeys & Travel Sketches

In June 2024, Ding Yi began his first trip to the ancient Naxi region, starting from the Dongba Culture Museum in Lijiang. He traveled from Lijiang and Shangri-La to Deqin, passing through Xiaozhongdian, Yubeng Village, and Songzanlin Monastery–like a pilgrimage toward the natural peaks of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, Meili Snow Mountain, and Baima Snow Mountain. If the first journey was a fusion of “freshness” and “awe,” then the second was about how to turn “impressions” into reflection.

Two months later, Ding Yi returned to the ancient Naxi region, once again beginning at the Dongba Culture Museum in Lijiang. But this time, in pursuit of deeper traces of Naxi culture, he first visited Lijiang Dongba Cultural Research Institute, then continued on to a Naxi village in Yuhu, searching for the former residence of Joseph Rock, the American explorer of the 1920s. From there, he passed through Tiger Leaping Gorge to Baidi Village on Haba Snow Mountain, Baishuitai, Weixi, Rishuwan Village, and finally Judian and Tongdian Villages in the Tacheng area.

In November 2024, Ding Yi embarked on his third journey to the Naxi region. This time, building on the experience of his previous two trips, he arrived with a more comprehensive perspective. Drawing from sociological and anthropological methods, he sought out diverse and differentiated viewpoints. He interviewed He Hong, researcher from Lijiang Dongba Cultural Research Institute, visited Ruhom Tsering Dorje, the director of the Moso Museum by Lugu Lake, and spoke with three Dongbas of different surnames: the elder Dongba Yang Zhanshi from Youmi Village in Labo Township, Ninglang County; the young Dongba A Gongta; and Shi Maning.

In some respects, Ding Yi’s identity–and his earlier journeys and work in Tibet– led him to consciously differentiate his approach from that of Joseph Rock in the 1920s and the perspective found in Lost Horizon, the novel inspired by Rock’s experiences in Asia. Ding Yi invited a Tibetan filmmaker to document the story of the journey. This unique decision underscores his attitude toward Dongba culture: he refuses to record his subjects through the lens of “colonial exoticism” or “Western-centrism.” The shared history, circumstances, and emotions between Tibetan and Naxi peoples–along with their religious connections–imbue the film with a deeper sense of empathy and intimacy. In some ways, this perspective can be described as one of reverence or “Looking Up”–a shared devotion and awe that Ding Yi, the Tibetan filmmaker, and the Naxi people express toward nature, life, and the cosmos.

Out of this emotional connection, Ding Yi created a series of Travel Sketches across the three journeys. These small-scale works capture fragments of the road–sometimes a fleeting sensory impression, like a first encounter with the landscape: snowy mountains, rainbows, night skies, and stars. Sometimes they reflect a visual jolt: the yellows beneath the blazing sun, the crimson earth, or the ribbons of red, blue, and white. At other times, they involve iconographic research: ancient Naxi scripts, diagrams of the Twenty-Eight Mansions, or grid-like decorative patterns.

For Ding Yi, travel is of utmost importance. It is through these journeys that he brings the world into his artistic practice. Whether it is a shift in psychology or a surge of creative inspiration, each trip becomes an opportunity for Ding Yi to renew and reinvent his “cross” motif. The “cross” also becomes a kind of visual diary embedded in travel. This answers a lingering question: how can an artist, over nearly 40 years, continue to work with the repeated motif of the “cross” without falling into stylistic monotony or conceptual rigidity? Through each journey, the “cross” is continually reactivated–following an unwavering principle yet constantly open to new possibilities, embracing both closure and openness in its very structure.

Thus, the “cross” becomes like a living organism, or a devout soul, journeying through the human world.

The Recurrent Journey

In 1989, Ding Yi spent a week in Lhasa. He had originally planned to go to Mount Everest, but just before departure he was told that a climbing permit was required, so he had to change his route and went to Zhangmu instead. That was Ding Yi’s first visit to Tibet. In 2019, he went to Tibet again–this time to Ngari–where he stayed for several days. He was somewhat disappointed: the ruins of the Guge Kingdom were under restoration and thus inaccessible, and he did not circumambulate Mount Kailash, only viewed it from a distance. It wasn’t until the winter of 2021 that he truly had a deeper experience of Tibet. He visited temples in different cities, met many local Tibetans, and reached the Everest Base Camp. Equally important, his exchanges with local monks and members of the cultural and artistic communities offered him a more multidimensional understanding and reflection. Based on these three journeys, he created his first body of work related to Tibet, which was exhibited at the Jebum-gang Art Center and Shide Space in Lhasa.

In retrospect, this unique experience, guided by an invisible hand, marked the beginning of a new creative phase for Ding Yi: conducting inquiry and reflective creation based on the geographical site of the exhibition, thereby inspiring new ideas and possibilities for the “cross.” In the same spirit, in 2022, Ding Yi traveled to Qingdao, where he created works inspired by the local bay, ocean waves, and starry skies–exploring the historical encounter between the port city and the sea. The exhibition, titled “Flowing Infinity,” implied that the “cross” was moving beyond the confines of a closed abstract system, opening up toward the broader realms of nature and reality.

In August 2023, Ding Yi held another solo exhibition in Shenzhen. Unlike his previous shows, this time his perspective shifted from the city itself to the individuals within it–toward the multitude of lives surging within this spearhead of China’s Reform and Opening-Up, this modern metropolis. The “cross” also transformed from an object into a living being. In September of the same year, Ding Yi returned to the starting point of his journey–his hometown, Ningbo, where he held exhibitions at two art museums in the city. The story of the “cross” thus moved from other people to himself, unfolding into an autobiographical narrative. On the opening page of the exhibition catalogue, Ding Yi wrote: “Dedicated to my father.”

Hometown, journey, highland, ocean, flowing life–these different words form Ding Yi’s new spiritual orientation, the beginning of a winding path: a path along which the “cross” embarks, immortal, boundless in time, yet ever precarious– like the human heart and fate itself.

At the end of this exhibition, we have carefully selected Ding Yi’s works from 1987 to 2021. They serve as both a prologue and a starting point to this winding path.

Ten works from different periods present key moments along Ding Yi’s journey. Yet unlike evolution, there is no sense of progress or substitution among the “crosses.” They serve instead as pivots and bridges for one another–borrowing from, complementing, and building upon each other to form a vast and intricate system of “Appearance of Crosses.” Much like the relationships that govern all things in the world: where there is a city, there is also nature; where there is industry, there is also agrarian labor; where there is a downward or level gaze, there is also an upward gaze toward life.

In 1987, Ding Yi began his first batch of “crosses” on sheets of printing paper. Using rulers and masking tape, he created calm, rigorous works devoid of any trace of the hand–bringing precision into abstraction. From that moment, two foundational principles were established. First, the “cross” is both the basic visual element and the sole content of the painting. Second, all works are titled “Appearance of Crosses” followed by the year of creation–deliberately distancing themselves from interpretative systems in art discourse.

In the 1990s, Ding Yi continued his exploration of conceptual art, reinforcing the idea of the “cross” as a stable and uncompromising conceptual system. He could have followed in the footsteps of minimalism–repeating the “cross” endlessly, turning himself into a fully codified product of the industrial world. But he refused. He would not sacrifice the relationship between time and ephemerality–his works always carry a subtle, living tremor. He would not sacrifice the relationship between labor and silence–in repetition, one can sense the poetics of physical effort. He refused to deny reality and the passions of the surrounding world. By 2000, he was already capturing the rhythms of Shanghai and the process of urbanization.

Now, many years later, Ding Yi no longer lets the “cross” remain nestled in one place, nor comfortably settled within a single civilization. Instead, he ventures out–to the meeting point of sea and stars, returning to his hometown and his father’s story, searching between the vast plateau and the boundless cosmos for a winding path that climbs upward.