Healing through art
Chang still drew in his spare time, for even sketching interior designs filled that need and brought him joy. But as his business grew and he got busier and busier, there was less and less space in his life for art, which was crowded out by numbers. In 1991, at the peak of his success, chronic stress afflicted him with a disorder of the nervous system. He often lost his balance and fell when walking, and suffered depression and insomnia. Endless tests failed to find the underlying cause.
But then a business trip to Japan changed everything. Chang happened to see a group of monks on a mountain path. The sun sprinkled down on their tranquil, reverent faces, a scene so beautiful that he couldn’t help but attempt to commit his vision to paper when he got back to the hotel. There he painted for three days straight, without sleep or rest. His concerned wife hovered over him, chiding him to take care, but his efforts only energized him rather than depleting his reserves. He had made a miraculous recovery from his chronic nervous debility.
For Yahon Chang, art is about appreciation and redemption, healing and understanding. His wife and help-meet’s sudden death of a heart attack in 2000 sank him into the depths of depression. His art was mainly toned black during those days, with abstract shapes evoking nirvana, prophecy, silence, and meditation. His “Shadow of Buddha” series depicts the search for a Buddha’s peace of mind that ends with the discovery that Buddha was in his heart all along. These paintings are done in shades of black, brown, and gray, dark colors revealing Chang’s immense pain at the loss of his wife. Consigning his widower’s grief to the canvas sustained him through those difficult days.
At the 2015 Venice Biennale, Chang made spontaneous art on the ceiling, walls, windows and floor of the exhibition space, on the theme of “The Question of Beings.” (courtesy of Yahon Chang)