Stickers for Qi (by Moonassi)

"Water-Wind (Qi)," by Moonassi. Artwork for the loanword "Qi," from the book An Ecotopian Lexicon, www.ecotopianlexicon.com. /// In An Ecotopian Lexicon, Yifei Li writes, "Qi offers a way to reconstruct our ecological imagination for the Anthropocene.... qi entails a universal sense of care. The same qi that empowers humans lies in mountains, rivers, landfills, and even parking lots. The notion of qi establishes a complex web of relationships that traverse boundaries, scales, and species. It is indiscriminate... In these ways, qi has the potential to enable a new ecological imagination." /// In his Artist Statement, Moonassi writes, "In both East and West, the wisest philosophers have said, “All things move.” It may be because if we fix objects and phenomena as static notions, we cannot readily cope with the fluid and dynamically changing world. In the same way, Laozi’s Tao and Buddha’s Emptiness speak the truth about the “ever-changing world” and “the world where all things are possible.” As such, I believe that when we look to change our lives, we must not pursue ideas such as “happiness” and “peace” as static goals but rather act with the faith that a happy disposition brings happiness to the present moment. I attempted to capture in this piece the nature of qi, which is the constant effort to change." /// For more artwork by Moonassi, go to www.moonassi.com.