Rat-Buddha was exhibited in 1989 in a three-story atrium at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design as part of the McKnight Foundation Fellowship Exhibition.
On the third floor a black box filled with water is suspended in the center of the space. An ordinary faucet allows water to slowing drip out of the box down to the second floor and into the Buddha cage. The drips from the box collect in a glass dish.
A family of 5 rats drink from this disk in the center of the Buddha. As the rats shake the suspended cage the dish overflows, spilling water down through the blue wires to the ant-infested mountain range on the first floor.
This installation is about spiritual aspiration.
The mountain, often a symbol of spiritual ascent, is home to hundreds of red ants. A characteristic of this variety of ant (California Harvester) is that they seek the highest ground.
They climb to the top of the mountain and attempt to scale the wires. Some of the ants actually make it to the Buddha, the rats and disillusionment. Only by looking beyond the image of god do they find the black box, and so return to the mystery and sustenance of life.
