Ruiji Han: Rituals of Transformation and Transcendence

Ruiji Han, a London-based artist, weaves sculpture, installation, and performance into powerful meditations on spirituality, identity, and transformation. Working with raw materials such as steel, concrete, animal skin, and bone, Han creates visceral forms that resemble ritualistic shrines and otherworldly spaces. These works evoke a transcendental nature, drawing from ancestral shamanic traditions and ritual practices of northern China to challenge human-centered ideologies and reconnect with the natural world.

Central to Han’s practice is the tension between industrial and organic materials. Steel and concrete, symbols of human control, are juxtaposed with biological remnants to explore fragility, impermanence, and the sacred. This fusion underscores themes of identity and transformation, confronting societal norms and revealing the fluidity of sexuality, memory, and the self.

Han’s installations are more than objects; they are spaces of ritual. By invoking shamanic practices, they propose a reimagining of existence, where the self is not isolated but deeply enmeshed with the ecological and spiritual. Their work becomes a call to transcend disconnection, to confront fragmentation, and to embrace transformation as a pathway to transcendence.

Through ritualistic forms and raw materials, Ruiji Han questions conventional narratives, integrating elements of BDSM and animalistic states to critique prudence and self-righteousness. Han’s work probes the coexistence of sexuality and violence, highlighting their raw tension within the human condition. By invoking traditional rituals, Ruiji challenges materialist worldviews and envisions alternative ways of living. This synthesis of sacred and brutal elements produces spaces charged with transformative energy.

Han’s sculptures and installations investigate the interplay of ecological collapse, spiritual renewal, and evolving identities. Blurring boundaries between human and non-human, Ruiji examines impermanence, gender fluidity, and the self. These works reject passivity and sentimental gratification, confronting the dynamics of power, desire, and vulnerability. They invite viewers to reflect on liberation, transformation, and the reclamation of primal instincts in a modern context.

The Cobra Quarry, 2023

Ruiji Han’s The Cobra Quarry (2023) stands as a brooding monument to tension, decay, and the existential conflict between nature and human intervention. Weighing an imposing 105 kilograms, the sculpture’s physicality commands the viewer’s attention, embodying an oppressive energy that is at once visceral and cerebral. Cement blocks, tightly bound by black rubber, form the core structure - a visual language of confinement and strain. The deliberate tautness of the rubber suggests the uneasy balance between containment and the imminent threat of rupture, as though the material itself strains under invisible pressure.

At its core, the gleaming bed of nails, cold and unforgiving, evokes visceral discomfort, while the coiled trap introduces an undercurrent of latent violence. These elements speak to a sense of danger that lies dormant yet omnipresent, poised to strike. The juxtaposition of these predatory forms against the rigidity of cement amplifies the atmosphere of unease, positioning the work as a study in vulnerability and resilience.

A fossil embedded within the cement introduces a haunting temporal layer to the piece - a relic of life encased within the lifeless rigidity of industrial material. It gestures toward the irreconcilable tension between organic and synthetic, as though nature itself is both preserved and entombed by human constructs. The pewter accents, catching and refracting light, lend a spectral quality to the otherwise brutalist composition, as if to suggest fleeting glimpses of vitality amidst suffocation.

By uniting materials both industrial and organic - cement, rubber, nails, and fossil - The Cobra Quarry interrogates the permanence of human imposition on the natural world. The work is a stark meditation on power dynamics, exploring how industrial encroachments seek to dominate and constrain the organic, yet fail to extinguish its latent presence. Ruiji Han invites viewers to reflect on the cycles of containment, exploitation, and survival, situating their practice at the intersection of ritualistic brutality and poetic transcendence.

MY VOICE IS A DEATH RATTLE, 2022

Ruiji Han’s MY VOICE IS A DEATH RATTLE (2022) confronts the viewer with a haunting tableau of decay, disconnection, and transcendence. Towering at 210 cm, the sculptural piece evokes the essence of a shrine, its raw and mild steel frame exuding an austere and unrelenting presence. At its heart, a horse skull - a relic of a once-liberated being - hangs suspended within a metal cage, its skeletal form a somber testimony to vitality extinguished.

The skeletal remains are supported by steel legs that evoke both fragility and unyielding rigidity, as though the structure teeters on the edge of collapse yet persists with grim determination. Synthetic hair and resin embellishments introduce unsettling contrasts, merging organic echoes with synthetic simulacra. These elements together create a spectral vibration, an ominous tension between life and death, the natural and the constructed.

The work’s atmospheric weight is amplified by the barren aesthetic of the shrine-like structure, which feels charged with a foreboding essence. The cage, an instrument of confinement, not only imprisons the horse skull but also suspends its spirit in a state of liminality. This oppressive environment feels both void-like and electrified, as if the air itself crackles with unseen forces, draining vitality from its surroundings.

Pewter accents glimmer faintly within the muted composition, offering brief flashes of spectral energy amidst the starkness. These fleeting moments of illumination act as visual metaphors for transcendence - a confrontation with the void that paradoxically urges the viewer to seek renewal. The construction’s towering presence evokes an omen, a death knell that reverberates through time and space.

With MY VOICE IS A DEATH RATTLE, Ruiji Han challenges the beholder to grapple with mortality and decay, not as an end but as a passage. The work transcends its brutal materials, emerging as a ritualistic artifact that bridges the earthly and the otherworldly. It offers a profound meditation on confinement, decay, and the spectral potential for transformation within the confrontation of loss.

Images: ©Ruiji Han, Courtesy of the Artist

Editor: MIAO